haven’t read all of Mark’s rant this morning (b/c quite frankly, he’s hard to stomach sometimes), but I smiled at this part:

“Everything we invent or lick or insert into our orifices actually erodes our very beings and slowly eats away at our life force and wants us dead dead dead because, well, this is just the way it works: You’re born, gravity grabs hold and it’s pretty much all downhill from there. And God went, shrug. “

I forget it a lot, but I know it’s about living a little more deliberately.  I’m not talking about control, I’m talking about thoughtfulness and knowing things about yourself and committing to learning your voice and what it wants and what it’s telling you and what is actually best for you rather than what I can prop up or allow myself to lean slightly into and float along with for awhile.  It’s about pushing through the whims that are indulgent and mentally devised to keep me from facing things I need to face. 

Certainly, if I remembered this a little more, I wouldn’t skip to the shallows so much.  I would value the process and the sweating it out and the uncomfortable end result to a level that I wouldn’t push it away.  I complain here on encantada, but after doing so, the inevitable circle comes around to lots of reflection and a silent sort of understanding and a centeredness that I never reflect on here.  So it happens personally and I rarely share it.  What you hear about here is when I lose what I’d achieved, and it happens plenty enough that I come back here to regain it.  I forget how I had it before and then how I lost it and my learning stems from, “ah, I remember this.  I’ve been here before already; done this a dozen times or two.”  That’s why I’m talking about deliberateness.  It’s pretty clear I can add a few things, a few reflective moments in my day that aren’t composed of making lists and knocking things out, but instead are just conscious thoughts about what I want and what I’m for. 

I’m learning finally that I didn’t make the wrong decision when I left my relationship.  I’m getting better about the punishing myself bit, about feeling like such an asshole and being surprised at the level of my ability to cause so many things to ripple across universes, both painful and otherwise.  I’ve been remembering lately that I’m fine.  That I feel fine about my future, that in fact I’m excited.  I’ve been realizing that I’m not at all ready for what others want from me, and I don’t have to feel bad about it like I do.  And why exactly do I bind myself because of someone else’s feelings for me?  I’m trying presently not to hate myself for engaging without being able to give myself.  I feel really responsible for that, like I should be stronger and not appear like I’m making promises that I don’t end up paying. It’s been told to me that I can choose to make it easier, I can choose to quit fighting what’s being given to me.  But to that, I softly say “stop”.  Please stop.  Please see this for what it is and what you should expect from me right now.  I feel like a jerk for all my iterations of that, for engaging without giving myself fully, for emails I don’t respond to quickly and calls I haven’t returned.  I’ve been so frustrated that I haven’t achieved the girl I meant to be when I did all this.  But tonight, I realize that I haven’t been blowing it either.  It’s just not where I am right now and that’s fkking alright because it looks like I’m going to get there. 

I’ve learned this year that there’s not a single straight male friend in my life who wants to ultimately be friends with me.  Surely there’s one, but I don’t remember who he is right now; he hasn’t shown his face for awhile to remind me why I thought that I could have single guy friends.  I won’t subject the whole world to superlatives and I’m not at all bashing men because I like them so much, but I know now it’s fkking hard to come by someone who values knowing me.  It’s  painfully disappointing.  It’s disappointing to never get to have a reaction that’s actually understood because now I have to take responsibility and protect myself and to always be wondering where he intends to take it, this basic, neutral conversation that we’re having.  It’s disappointing to not be able to be myself, because the risk exists that I’ll unknowingly do something that results in an uncomfortable outcome and then have to deal with “what I’ve created” and feel bad about it and then have a slightly uncomfortable but necessary talk.  I’m not being “Oh groan; poor me,” I’m actually pretty saddened by this because I want to avoid the problems I keep meeting.  I used to be able to identify what I was doing (or what element of my personality caused it), but now, it’s beyond even that.  It has happened when I’m being neutral, when I’m being one of the guys, when I’m barely talking at all. 

I want to know people without going there; I want to correct whatever behavior of mine, whatever it is that I have or do that makes this happen, that cheats me of the friends I wanted to keep.  But then really, I can’t fix it all.  So it’s ultimately just this loss I keep experiencing over again and it blows.

Recently, I tried to broach this in the most neutral way I could conceive with an old friend I had the pleasure of re-friending, who after some wine and good conversation, sent multiple texts for me to turn around and come back and stay the night.  The move bothered me b/c I wasn’t expecting it, b/c  it changed what I thought was the deal and it left me feeling conned, like I was naive to feel safe in a “friend” environment,… and I guess I don’t like feeling that way.  I don’t like distrusting myself or my ability to read a situation.  It’s unsettling.  The truth is,  I was actually hurt b/c we’ve known each other so long, and when I brought it up to him, his reaction left me feeling like some idiotic emotional woman and I hated it.  Perhaps I am naive for this reaction, but I want badly for that not to be the case.  Because gosh, what a waste. 

I feel like I should be packing more, but I also feel like these next two weeks are last golden moments of my warm, comfortable and memorable Houston life.  And they’re my last golden moments of homesteading with Melissa.  So I’m forgiving myself packing and giving myself small indulgences.  Like watching DVR’d Barefoot Contessa and 30 Rock episodes.  Like making little tiny cupcakes from the AMAZING recipe we’d frozen the leftovers from, from Mark’s birthday a few months ago this past summer.  Like half jokingly planning a going away party and using all the leftover party gear – all together and mismatched – that we’ve collected over the years of giving so many parties.  Like taking Holly off my bed and walking into her room and putting him on her bed, then closing the door so he won’t escape back to my room.

There’s lots to escape from here.  And there’s so much that won’t be escaping at all, but moving on with a hand waving bye to the oak-lined streets and tear in the throat for all we did here.

It’s all about doing, isn’t it.  Friends tell me that all the time, to quit the stomach knotting and the teeth knashing and to fkking get fkking going for fkk’s sake already.  That sounds fantastic.  I don’t live in a pool of lethargy, but I spend too much time trying to figure things out; trying to figure out what I actually feel about something.  And that usually results in losing my momentum for the issue in general.  Or replacing it with something that makes the action whither, something that’s uncomfortable to deal with so now that takes precedence, this new angst, instead of the action what was initially important.  This is the cycle to how an action comes back around to being the chosen option.  Choose the action to replace the angst that avoiding the action initially created.  It’s all so unnecessary.  Like a child uses anger to push a problem away, I can cross the world overthinking something but stay standing in the exact same place.  And then remain there.  Because now I’m tired, or I’ve allowed you to talk me into staying and doing this. 

A great antidepressant for me is productivity, yet I want to choose avoidance.  I have  so many wolf-in-productive-sheep’s-clothing behaviors like cleaning my house (b/c it always needs cleaning!  Doing that, I can justify putting off ANYTHING.  Multiple times and twice on Sundays.)  Another great antidepressant is exercise.  Lately though, I’ve become so much less patient with all of it, but I used to absolutely love it.  I want to run to burn burn burn but I’m not OCD enough anymore; when it hurts and my face stays red for hours, I don’t want to keep it up, even though I know constancy is the almighty means to the mthrfking end. 

But isn’t this all old hat, old song and old dance that your eyes are tired of reading it here and my shoes are worn out from pursuing it?  Yes.  New theme time.  New colors.  New way to think through sticking it. 

Which just reminded me: when I was a pre-teen type kid, I started getting somewhat athletic and I started learning to flip and to flop and to ball tuck and to jump and to get tossed up onto human pyramids, where, amid precarious swaying under the soft engineering of not-yet-fully-developed young, untrained and untested muscles, I was told to “STICK IT!!”  “GET STRAIGHT AND TIGHTEN UP AND STICK THAT!”  And to not fall.  But I was never that good, and I fell plenty and I’m laughing right now trying to picture my face scrunched up in a fierce effort to stay strong and fearless and rigid.  At some point, is EVERY effort of our lives fodder for the shaking head joke-making of our future?  Probably so.

I’m probably only writing this b/c I have more assignments to write and I don’t want to do it.  And I offered them up myself, offered to do them on my own because I thought they were better stories than my Usually Assigned.  They’re due tomorrow and I don’t want to stay here and do them.  I want to picture it college-style, knocking it all out in one swoop all-nighter at a cute coffee shop with the aid of plenty of things but also drugs or elixirs that end in ‘eine, ‘ine, ’lin or ‘all.  And I already know myself; I can’t get work done in a public place of distractions.  I’m distracted enough; I seek out distraction.  Nope, none of it helps anymore; in fact it hurts, so what I’ve got going for me is the obvious.  Write, Lauren.  Fkking write.  Swim, little piggy. 

There are times when I just want people to quit wanting things from me.  But my great folly and my great fault is my goddamn innate need to please the ones who hold on to me.  Because I want to be held onto.  Never does it ever, my wish to quit being emotionally engaged and pulled by every single human who loves me, trump my desire not to disappoint.  Never.  So I jump into my fish costume, wriggle around on the floor at their feet, and wait to be stopped either by their stepping, my exhaustion or the general passing of time and ridiculousness.  For chrissake I know better.  I just don’t remember better at the time.

Whoa. 

A day before blastoff, U.S. astronaut presented with Kazakh whip to command her crew

Associated Press
BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan: A Russian space official presented a traditional Kazakh whip to U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson on Tuesday so she can “manage her crew” when she becomes the first woman to command the international space station.

In other news, I have this huge fear right now, that this is what my @$$ is looking like too.  Ouch.  My favorite part of the image are these people’s faces.  Killer!