dealing

I thought it had been longer since I last wrote here. I feel like I’ve sat down a hundred times and started to type. But I see it’s been less than a week. Funny.

I’ve been feeling very overwhelmed in my professional life lately. And rather underwhelmed in my personal life. I’ve been processing so much. I’ve had so much to say. But I come home at night and discover that I just can’t deal with it. That I’d rather just tune out for a while. Shoving my problems under the proverbial rug.

I had a little mini heart to heart with a good friend on Friday. We’d both had one of those weeks. She said some stuff that hit home. Nothing I hadn’t told myself already, but hearing it from someone else always feels different.

I’m not happy. I won’t go so far as to say that I am unhappy. But there are definitely things about my life that are not what I want them to be. But there are things that are simply beyond my control. And truthfully, even if they were in my control, I don’t entirely know what I would change.

PF and I have hit a rough patch. Or what feels like a rough patch to me. I’m so out of practice at relationships that I don’t quite know how to deal with it. I can’t remember the last time I had an issue with someone and truly worked through it. Clearly LH and I weren’t good at that. Aaron and I tended to scratch the surface a little and then just ignore things. Or, I would talk and he would ignore.

I feel helpless and I feel lost. I want to fix things but don’t know how. I don’t know which part is the part that needs fixing. I know that I love him. Academically I know that relationships take work and that life has its own system of cycles. I’m officially throwing my hands up on this one. Trusting and hoping like hell that things will sort themselves out.

But it has me feeling much more lost than I’d like to admit.

So.

The only thing I know to do is to take charge of what I can. To do the things that make me happy. Because at the end of the day I am the only one responsible for my happiness.

I miss singing. So I bit the bullet and sent an email that I was asked to send 10 months ago. Requesting an audition for a chorus conducted by a friend and colleague. It’s much smaller than the group I used to sing with and it’s composed primarily of current or former professional musicians and music educators. That’s much more my speed. So we’ll see how that goes.

I cleaned my apartment. Really cleaned. There was bleach involved. And I cleaned out my closet. I have a huge bag of stuff to take to Goodwill. I reorganized what was left. I couldn’t help but snicker a little as all of my black tie gowns and cocktail dresses wound up hanging next to all of my latex and other fetish wear.

I went online and signed up for a CSA (community supported agriculture) service. Yes PF, you may tease me and call me Californian. I’ll remind you that I’ve been shipping pecans from my hometown ever since leaving there. The CSA box is to serve two purposes. I’m trying to get serious about getting healthy again and part of that is introducing more produce. I could start hitting up the many farmer’s markets but I’m hoping having a box delivered to me will force me out of my culinary rut. And as a chef, I’m looking forward to the challenge of getting outside my box a little as well as increasing awareness of seasonal ingredients.

As for work, I’m just clicking along there. I’m past some big deadlines so I feel breathing room again. My new direct report is coming along exactly as I’d hoped. Better even. It occurred to me that there was the transitional period between my predecessor leaving and a replacement being hired that I did both jobs for 4 and a half months. Then I hired someone who never really caught on and I was still carrying some of that workload. Then her disciplinary action started. And now, finally, after 23 months of carrying all or part of that workload on top of my own, I’m finally seeing the light of having it all handed off to someone else. Which means doing only my own job. Now, my own job is still enough that it could be split into two full-time positions, but still. The load is finally finally lifting.

I could wax on about how life is what we make it and how many things in my life are really something to be proud of, but I’m not there. Not now. Not yet. Where I am is that I’m only one person. And there’s only so much I can do. So I’m going to do the things that make me happy and I’m going to do the best that I can and I’m going to focus on the things that make sense.

And the rest, will either work out or it won’t.

dancing in the dark

Sometimes I don’t want to process. Sometimes I just like to feel the sadness. I’ve grown comfortable with its weight.

When I sat down at my computer tonight, I thought it would be to write about my mother and my sometimes complicated relationship with her. Little tears have been working their way out all evening. Ever since our phone call. No real crying spells. Just the occasional wetness snaking its way down my cheek.

I thought I needed to come here and to process.

But I turned on iTunes and I came to this place and I simply stared at a white screen. I’d turned on a slow and smooth playlist, fitting for my mood. But as a song drifted by, and then two, and then three, I realized that what I needed was not to write. What I need was to just feel the sadness.

So I lit a candle. And I turned off all of the lights in my apartment. I switched to a slightly different playlist. And then I turned the volume up. Way up. And I just danced.

Dancing is something I love to do. I usually do it in a club. Quite often there is soothing herb. There is always alcohol. I’m usually in something cut low across my breasts and high across my thighs. Hair down so I can run my fingers through it. Artful smudges in black and gray shadow around my eyes.

I like going to a club and getting lost in the movement of bodies on a dance floor. I like that feeling of being connected but not. If I have a partner, great, but it’s OK if I don’t. I like to just close my eyes and let instinct takeover.

Tonight, without the chemicals and without the heavy eye shadow, I danced. For myself. I let the music play and I let my hips and my heart take over. I began to strip. Peeling off layer upon layer. Until I was naked in the candlelight. The tears came then. As I stood in my living room swaying to “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” by the Beatles.

It was the last song. I sank to my knees and was just still for a minute. Letting the tears dry themselves. And then I returned to my computer to write.

simplifying

When I sat down to write I truly didn’t know what was going to flow from fingers to keyboard to screen. It’s Sunday night. So I’m doing my thing where I make sure the dishes are done and laundry is in the hamper and lunch is packed. Where I clean out my inbox and respond to any lingering email and pay bills and generally make sure my life is in order to begin a new week.

Only the lamps on the desk and the piano are lit. My iTunes is playing from my favorite “sad and sappy” playlist. My balcony door is cracked open and the blinds are dancing wildly on the chilly breeze that’s rushing into my living room. I can hear the wind thundering through the trees outside. It’s that kind of night high on my hill with nothing to stop it.

There’s a lot on my professional plate about which I’d like to write. Trials and tribulations. Frustrations and goals. Plans I’d like to put in action. There’s the recent visit with PF that I’m still processing. Conversations with Aaron. Reframing of so many relationships in my life. I’ve been taking stock.

And in the midst of that, I’ve been surfing. And I stumbled across a blog entry. Posted on my employer’s blog. The context is not important. The sentiment is. The post talks about our past and how we’re affected by it. How we are deformed by it. That it is always there. Always present. And how we react to it.

And it gave me pause.

Because I’ve been cracking a little under the strain of my life in recent days. My baggage has all come back with a vengeance. My drive and my ambition. My need to have a plan for everything. My belief that if I put up strategic walls it will prevent me from getting hurt. The tears that come with the realization that logic is complete crap. My constant need to fill the voids in my life with project after project. With meaningless sex.

I’ve heard myself say more than once recently, that I’m just tired of being alone. That I’m tired of being on my own. But have I actually been doing that? I look at this blog and see how everything is about a constant search for a partner. For my happily ever after. I’ve been working so hard to get to my finish line. My perfect job and perfect relationship arrangement.

I don’t think that I’ve ever taken the time to actually be on my own. To entertain myself. On some levels, yes. But I can also look at a staggering number of sexual partners in the last two years as evidence to the contrary.

I’ve always counseled friends with the words “if you can’t make yourself happy, you can’t expect anyone else to either.” And the truth is, I’m in love with two pretty wonderful men, both of whom are long distance, and both of whom are pretty clear on the fact that I’m not to be sitting around waiting on them.

In the past I would have approached “not waiting” by strings of random dates. Filling my time with pleasures of the flesh that only leave me empty at the end of the night. On wallowing with sad movies. Junk food and girly magazines. An overpacked social calendar and too many projects that I can really handle.

Instead of exploring the museums that I want to explore. On taking road trips on my own just because. I’ve spent my time at big parties and group outings instead of quiet dinners with the people that matter most. There’s a stack of books on my nightstand waiting to be read. There are career steps I’d like to take that will require work on my end. Simply paying dues isn’t enough. Not to go where I want to go. There’s a type of life I’d like to live and a type of home I’d like to have, and what I’m doing now is only getting me part way there.

A few weeks ago I sat at a bar, across the table from a dear friend, a friend who looked me dead in the eye and said, “girl, you need to simplify.” I’ve taken baby steps that direction. But I think it’s time for bigger ones. Because I know what I want. And I know what I need to do to get there. I’ve just let the path get a little cloudy.

habits

I am a creature of habit.

Long ago, when I was married and my husband traveled often, I developed a routine to cope with being left behind. In order for me to put the brave face on and go about living life and managing things on my own, it was important to give myself one night to pout. To let my inner child throw a tantrum over the fact that I was once again, left. I would rent chick movies and eat junk food and often there would be some sort of facial or pedicure action.

Tonight I’m doing that again. PF was here for three, all too brief, days. I’m pretty much at a loss for coherent words to describe his trip. To encapsulate our time together. It’s just too much. The emotions are overwhelming. The words are fighting to get out of my brain and yet they won’t come.

And though they will be written in time, for the moment, it’s best that I get back to the business of my day to day life. There’s to be no sitting around pining for him. So tonight, I returned to old habits.

There was junk food for dinner. Then I indulged in another favorite coping mechanism. I baked two separate cakes for a baking competition at work tomorrow, and still managed to bake cookies to be consumed tonight. I watched crap on TV, entertainment news and Sex in the City reruns and Dateline and South Park. I spent the whole day wearing the shirt that he left me. Burying my nose in the collar memorizing his scent and feeling his arms around me. I sat at the piano and played our song. I have no doubt that in a little while when I crawl into bed for the evening, tears will accompany me.

But tomorrow, I’ll return to the day to day. Packing away these emotions and putting them on a shelf to be dealt with on another day. As is my habit.

crazy train

I’m screaming inside my head right now. I’ve started writing out my story for PF. All of the sordid details. A chronicle of my marriage. And it has become my obsession. It’s in the back of my head all the time. All of those memories. The loss of innocence. The sad truth of what we were. I hate writing it as much as I know that I need to do it.

There’s just so much coming to the surface. There was before I started this, but it seems worse now. Issues with marriage and fidelity. Repeated mistakes in relationships. Compounded  by the passing of what would have been my wedding anniversary, the birth of Aaron’s child, by shifting feelings where Aaron is concerned, ethical conflict about PF himself. And the show we’re doing at the theater. There are some very strong associations with it. Because of the last time I worked on a production of this piece. It’s like this great big relationship perfect storm.

On one hand it’s helping to be writing it all out. I’m seeing patterns of my own behavior. I’m seeing the very clear triggers for certain behaviors. I think that remembering the good and the bad will ultimately be a productive thing,

But I need to get through it. And part of me can’t help feeling like it’s some big test for PF. Like I’m saying, look, here it is. All the ways I’m fucked up and all the reasons why. Like maybe if I throw it all out there in the rawest form I know, and he doesn’t go running for the hills, then maybe I’ll be able to trust him. To really, really trust him.

But that’s not fair to him. And so then I worry that this won’t, in fact, be of any use to anyone. What if I’m just picking at old wounds for sport. When I thought they’d finally healed over, why go ripping into them.

Except that I’ve started it. And I have to finish it. There’s no going back now.