5 posts tagged “life”

Why are there things that are painfully obvious to me that no one else sees?

I want to talk about them.

I don't want to tell the world his secrets, but I want fresh perspectives.

Need someone to point out the flaws in my reasoning.

What if I'm wrong?

I don't want to ask, because I don't want to know.

But I want to know.

I'm still trying to make my heart stop hurting.

It was getting better.

Talking to him is going to tear it open again.

Whether he explains or whether he smacks me down, it's going to hurt.

I'm not who I was. And yet I am who I am.

If I don't talk to him I'm never going to get over it.

I'm not sure I'll get over it anyway.

But it's worth a try, right?

Better than some smart-assed comment leaping from my fingers to the screen and making me sorry.

Even sorrier than I'll be for talking about it directly.

If he'll talk to me at all.

---------------------------------

I keep telling myself--

Nothing has changed except what's in my mind.

I keep telling myself --

There will be other loves.

I keep telling myself --

They won't be him.

Since it's finally 'hit the presses,' so to speak, I'd like to present to you The Very Well-Linked Story, courtesy of Rob at cockeyed.com and myself as about one of 500-some others who contributed links to the story.  I thought the idea was terribly interesting and signed up to contribute right away.  So go forth and click, ye of my tiny, possibly non-existent reader base!

If, by chance, you are arriving from said very well-linked story, I congratulate you for your discriminating choice of words and welcome you to my little world.  I'm just now getting back in the hang of writing after having my soul sucked out by working retail at Christmas time for the second year in the row, but things are moving along.

This morning I woke up from my dreams with the fragmented beginnings of what might actually be a story that I can write floating around in my head.  I hit the sleep button a couple of times while I was trying to distill what was floating around into something that I could get up and hold in my mind until I could get it back out on paper (or, shall I say, into Notepad).  Dreams have that crazy quality of not usually being quite tangible enough to keep from the moment I rise off the pillows, but I think I managed most of it this time.  With luck, I'll be embarking on that project in the near future.

As for more personal details, there isn't a whole lot to say.  I'm a former (and, with luck, future) student who happens to be toiling in a retail establishment that purveys the printed word.  As I like to say--a bookwench.  One of the few perks of my job (along with the marvelous forced talent of being on my feet for eight hours at a time several days a week) is that I can check out pretty much any book at work for free, read it, return it, and take another one, just as often as I can finish one and find another.  Lately, this means that my average books-per-week is around four or five, though I've been dreadfully lax about tracking them on here since I got things started again last month.  For example:

I'd planned on giving this thing some attention on the 16th, as that would have been three months (Oi.) since I actually wrote in here.  Unfortunately the 16th came and went in a flurry of Wii playing, snow, and God knows what else.  Work, probably.  I put in some overtime (well, over my scheduled time--I came in at just under 40 hours for the week) at the end of the week because they needed some stuff done, and for whatever reason when I hit 40 hours a week the odds of me writing in here decrease dramatically, rather like they did in November.  Probably has something to do with the fact that I'm sleeping until the last possible minute, hurrying off to work, then coming back and crashing as soon as I can so I can get the most rest possible to get ready for another full day of work.  And weekends were really all about laundry, dishes, and just trying to deflect the craziness of the week past and the coming week as well. 

So anyway. Yeah.  I guess there really isn't any particular need to apologize, but of course I still feel apologetic.

Life has been more or less ordinary for me, but for whatever reason I missed all the snow-flying months, so perhaps that's a little to blame as well.  There's still the occasional chance of flurries on the radar, but after the drenching rain we've been getting since last night just after I clocked out at work, I think we're moving more-or-less smoothly into springtime, which is definitely foryay.  Sunshine and warmth will be most lovely to see again, I think.

It occurs to me that I probably can't even possibly log everything that I've read over the past three months, but of course I'll give it a try.  Some things stood out, like P.D. James' Children of Men, and Christopher Moore's You Suck (for which I had to read Bloodsucking Fiends to keep up), as well as getting through Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books.  One that I've been trying to get myself into lately is a book called The Dark Mirror, but I've had it out of work for a week and managed to only hack out about a hundred pages or so.  I want to read it, but it just hasn't grabbed me yet.

Stephen King's Dark Tower books are getting a comic series to match, but it turns out that my bookstore won't be carrying them.  Le sigh.  I was actually kind of looking forward to a comic book that I was really interested in.

I interviewed for an administrative assistant position a couple of weeks ago.  Apparently it didn't go so well, despite my interview which seemed rather promising.  I suppose we can't always get what we want, but boy would I like to get out of the bookstore.  It's not so much any one thing in particular that I'm tired of so much as I'm just tired.  This time of year the schedule's awfully lean, and we really could use a bit more money (who couldn't?) but I'm really hesitant to go to, say, Evan's job, which he really doesn't like but makes decent money--enough money, in fact, that he ends up kind of stuck unless he wants to downgrade his income--something we can't afford right now.  Meh.

The real impetus for this post was realizing that my totally anti-social best friend, J, is now maintaining a journal.  It's a writing journal, and she doesn't have much of the kind of personal posting that I'm much more apt to be making, but there's no reason that I can't do this if she can.  So I'm hoping to get this thing moving again, because I think it really is a part of my life that I want to continue.  Just not when I work a lot.  Or when it snows.  Ahem.

Anyway.  It's good to be back (I hope), and here's to keeping on keeping on. 

Whoops. Another weekend gone, another few days without a substantial post.  I really gotta get out of this habit, but I swear, there's nearly nothing interesting or out of the ordinary going on these days, and the last thing I want to do is fill this thing up with the same old mention of the same old routine, time and time again.

Once more, I've been finding the QotDs particularly uninspiring, though I can't quite put my finger on why.  I suspect that some of the problem lies with me and not them, but then again perhaps that was obvious.

Seeing how fast this entry is finding its way onto the page, I find it ironic that it is, apparently, easy to write about not having anything to write about--this is how Seinfeld got started, isn't it?

Today I wasn't supposed to work, but a co-worker's surgery was moved up from late this week to late last week, and so they needed me to cover a shift.  Originally, like a sane person, when offered Monday or Tuesday, picked Tuesday, so that I could have three consecutive days off, at least.  This wasn't the most practical choice, given that I also have an eye exam scheduled at the office that just happens to be right next to my store for today, Monday, at an hour that would coincide with the period that I wait after work for my husband to pick me up.  But he had managed to arrange to get off work a few minutes early so that he could get me to the exam.  Anyway.

A couple of days after I'd agreed to the extra day, my manager D comes up to me and says, "So, how would you feel about working Monday instead?"  He knew about the eye appointment, but apparently they could find someone else to cover the Tuesday shift, but not Monday.  Of course.  So, knowing that it was for the greater good, I agreed to take Monday.  At least I'll be off tomorrow and won't have to go out of the way to get to the eye doctor tonight.

The last time I got glasses was, as far as I can tell, five or six years ago, back when I was still on my mom's health insurance.  Our own insurance, through Evan's employer, kicked in a couple months ago, but I'd kept putting off the appointment for one reason or another.  Last week I stopped having a choice about it--the frame on one of the lenses snapped, and the only thing holding the frames together right now is some nail glue and a whole lot of hope.  I'm just hoping that technology has improved slightly in the past few years and that it won't take a good couple weeks for my lenses to come in--usually they have to be special ordered because the prescription is kind of strong.  I've been taking my contacts to work with me as a backup, but I prefer to leave them as just that if at all possible.

Last night we went out and saw the new Robin Williams' new film, Man of the Year.  It was...somewhere between the comedy you'd expect with the supporting cast (Christopher Walken, Lewis Black, Laura Linney, Jeff Goldblum), and some kind of Manchurian-Candidate-esque drama thriller.  Some parts were especially good, but it felt like the plot needed to be kind of tightened up and possibly be a little more coherent.  While it's good to not be able to guess the ending until it happens, it's kind of awkward to say in your mind, "So where, exactly, is this going?" from after the first half hour until the last ten minutes.  Oh, well.  There were some excellent-looking trailers before the movie, so that's something, eh?

And now it's probably about time to go get ready for the grind.  Yawn. 

The past couple days have been very illuminating for me.  Some random thoughts that stumbled across my mind while I was at work turned into several significant conversations that really intrigue me.

While, given my past situations with S, I fully had considered myself to be polyamorous before, for some reason I hadn't attached that designation to the state of the relationships I find myself in now.  Those relationship are certainly more than committed friendships, and through the rather obvious definition of "loving more than one," I finally got things through my thick head.  I'm still living a fairly poly lifestyle--it's just that now my primary, committed partner, my husband, isn't part of the equation.  Duh, Mira.  But hey, I'm allowed a few slips from time to time, right?  Right.

This, consequently, led me to an even more interesting thought regarding N, who was, I realize now, my first serious attempt at maintaining this sort of lifestyle.  He was the first person I had really and truly not only fell in love with, but felt a serious attraction to aside from my now-husband, who I had still been with for quite some time.  There had been other instances where people had wanted me to be in a more serious relationship with them, but that was before I was really feeling safe with that sort of thing.  I suppose it's fair to say that Evan and I had a strong enough relationship by then that I was ready to try again, whether I realized it in such obvious terms, or not.

Of course, given the way that things went with N, I can see now that I just didn't handle it well.  The primary things about being in such a relationship include being open and honest and finding out where everyone is comfortable going, and where they aren't.  I pretty much didn't do any of that, and got myself in a good deal of trouble.  As I told N last night, "I done fucked up good."

Now that I realized that, the solution to my current problem: what if any of the people I feel particularly close to come to visit me?  Secondarily, my concern is how much affection I can give them even over the limited media we have to communicate without upsetting Evan.  So I screwed up the courage to talk to him about it.  With N, before, there was no way he could have really understood, but since we both loved S, he has a bit better concept of how loving more than one person doesn't have to diminish anything.

Time is finite.  Energy is finite.  Love, however, is not.

I have as much love to give as I can find people to love.  If only there were more hours in the day, because Heaven knows right now I don't have nearly as much time as I'd like to spend with everyone.

We do not feel that we can't love our families any longer just because we have a boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, husband, or wife--at least, not usually.  Society has taught us that those kinds of love are different, and as such, we have no problems allowing ourselves to have multiple loving relationships in this way.

Why not continue this trend?  I realized even after a few "normal" relationships back in high school that the way I love each romantic partner is different.  While there remain similarities to other relationships in new ones, each person is unique, and as such, so are my feelings for them, when compared to my feelings for any other person that I care about.

The implication of this, for me, is the state of polyamory (or, if you will, polyromance) that I find myself living.  If I can love my husband and my mother, why not also love a friend, a girlfriend, or a boyfriend or two?  We only see this arrangement as awkward or unacceptable because we have learned that it is so.  For some reason (jealousy?) the general opinion seems to be that these alternatives are unsuitable.

I tend to suggest that jealousy is the root of the motivation to compartmentalize and limit our loving relationships.  After all, as I have acknowledged, while love may not be finite, time and energy certainly are.  It goes to follow that it's easy enough to reason that time spent together is a recognition and faciltation of love.  This much I can agree with.  But furthering this, many might say that when one ceases to spend as much time with a love, that that love becomes less.  Not so.  It is, however, a matter of security.

If we can be as secure about loving our family and simultaneously loving our significant other(s), then why not learn and help them understand that adding another love is equally as threatening--which is to say, not at all, at least under optimal conditions.

Of course, there are always exceptions, and unless your "base" relationship is stable, I imagine things like this are easier said than done.  I'm fortunate enough to have a husband who knows what it's like to love me with all his heart and still be completely in love with another woman (S), so it's not as difficult for me to explain it to him.  We have the policy of talking about everything, sharing our thoughts and feelings, and working things out to whatever ends necessary.  The stability I know with him is what allows me to love others wholeheartedly.

Another notion that strikes me about the ease that I have in loving others is that, in my mind, eventually they are going to find a more traditional romance and move on.  It's happened to me a couple times already, and once I got over the one who can't even talk to me anymore (long story there, but needless to say, the girl is very insecure), it kind of became understandable.  I know that I'm able to love them wholly and completely, perhaps even more so, because there is no fear of loss--it's almost implicit in the relationship, at least as far as romance goes.  I don't have some fatalistic assumption that most of them are going to turn out like the one, and I presume that a great friendship will still remain, even when I'm not allowed to snuggle on them any longer.

Why do my close relationships evolve this way?  I really don't know.  What I do know, however, is this post (which is two days in the making, at least), has had enough on the subject for now.  There's more on my mind, so I'll probably add another entry on the subject at this point.  But for now, this'll do.  Comments and questions are, as always, appreciated, as long as they are posed respectfully and intelligently.