california is a recipe for a black hole

I Know You Think That I Shouldn't Still Love You, Or Tell You That, But If I Didn't Say It, Well, I'D Still Have Felt It, Where's The Sense In That?

2012-09-01T05:18:00.000-07:00

--"White Flag", Dido

From mojo's Facebook account:

The problem I believe is the whole concept of labels. With other people, like B., I never actually had to have "the talk". I don't know if we ever tried to label what we were or are to one another. I've always just assumed we'll fit in each other's lives one or the other to the point where I don't question forever with her. Friend, older brother figure, confidante--it doesn't matter. I never had an issue with what label I wore as long as the length of service wasn't questioned.

But this whole storm of what T's visit means and how far we should go into telling everybody she's my girlfriend, friend, or whatever has got me a little floopy even though it's still about three months away. I get the feeling that how long we remain close depends entirely on what label we deign to bestow upon this relationship. If I put the incorrect appellation upon it then some buzzer sound will go off and I'll lose one of the closest confidantes I've ever had in my life. Yet I don't want to apply a label just for a label's sake either. That'd be unfair to say what we are is "this" when my heart just isn't to living up to the description fully.

That's the problem with labels for me. Whenever you give something or someone a label, you can just as easily take it away. But when you know how you feel about someone and that feeling is fairly strong, it's harder to lose that feeling. It's more secure to say I love this person than to say she and I are a couple. Couples break up all the time and if that's all you are to one another then it's easy to lose one another.

But if you love a person regardless of what they are to you, you can go on being friends, become more serious, less serious, or totally serious and have no fear that whatever comes next will mean the end of everything the two of you share.

Or, to paraphrase, "Labels? We don't need no stinking labels." LOL

----

When my roommate read this her immediate question was if I was doing okay. I don't question the motive behind her query, but I do question her expectation of my reply. Not once have I ever shown her that I was prone to hysterics. I'm a candle at the top of a staircase, you have to walk for a good while before you can get approach the point where you can directly affect me. I may not be a stoic as I once was, even a few years ago, but it'll take more than one's man's opinion of how he foresees his future with me to dissuade me from my course of action, I can tell you that much.

As far as I read he's not disowning the idea that we belong together, he's disowning the theatrics that often accompany such announcements. That in itself is nothing worth my scorn. And as for his waffling on the issue about the direction his feelings have now taken? Well, that's just Patrick.

I know many of you can't speak to his state of mind during the last six months, especially when it comes to his romantic affairs. Many of you have only been exposed to such thoughts through the living documentary from which you are now reading. What with the site being shut down for the last six months--maybe longer--and not in the best of shape in the months preceding that, I believe all our motives, our lives even, have been somewhat of a mystery. Sufficed to say that in the intervening months between then and now there was a large part of him that resented me. In much the same vein there was a large portion of my soul that was rent asunder when he informed that he was no longer in need of my friendship, my companionship, or my care.

That's not the kind of emotional turmoil that people can easily forget or forgive. They icy waters of reconciliation doesn't always put out the fire completely.

One of my favorite sayings is "Don't postpone joy." It's compact. It's straight-to-the-point. It speaks to my worldview of recent developments. I can't control how he feels about me. I can only control how I feel about him. And the part of me that enjoys him in my life is enough to compensate for the part of me that experiences displeasure at his indecision. At this moment it's enough to know that I care enough for the both of us while he takes the time to figure out how much he cares about me.

I was reading a book the other day that spoke of how everybody thinks they are the first to ever experience a particular set of circumstances. It digressed how everything thinks they're the first to get laughed out, the first to lose their way in the midst of a tough decision, how they're the first to ever find true happiness. What it also spoke of was how everyone thought they were the first to run into insurmountable obstacles in the pursuit of love's contentment. Not me. I know I'm not the pioneer when it comes to this area of expertise. I don't ever claim to be the first one ever to hurt in the particular way I hurt. Gosh. If that were true then I would have to stop believing that there are as many people living on this planet as there are.

My head, my heart, and my spirit were cut to a thousand strips of paper when he told me that I was getting too old for him and that Notre Dame had changed me for the worst. Neither of those aspects of my life I had any control over. Asking me to stop growing up made as much sense as me not attending my one and only dream school. You may well have asked me to stop breathing, or, worse yet, to stop writing. I was left defenseless on the other end of the line, questioning if the stories I'd heard about his mercurial temperament were true.

Over the last six months, after his head had thought over the discourse his heart had provided it, while he had been making the first overtures to repairing the damage between us, I kept his earlier words in mind. The way he had phrased his dissatisfaction hadn't been improvised; he had clearly been mulling over the matter beforehand, possibly for a few months by that point. That led me to the conclusion that, even if he hadn't wanted to break up, he would've needed a break from us sooner rather than later. He had crafted those words specifically to injure me in such a fashion I would have no other option but total abandonment. I wanted him to die for I no saw other recourse to gaining my precious stability.

However, much like his own journey, I discovered that I missed the totality of what we had even if the finer points still proved to be malleable. In other words, I didn't know what I wanted back; I just knew I wanted him back. He was the ocean and I was once again the girl who dreamed of getting back to that wonderful place. It wasn't the water, the blue sky, or the calm breezes that I specifically missed; it was the entire scene and how I felt when placed among the landmarks that I sorely required again.

And even though everything told me he was prone to aim his poisoned arrows at me once his restlessness pervaded his thoughts again, I found I couldn't hold onto the idea of his absence any longer. I found myself caring about his attention more than I cared about my own bitterness. I found myself wanting to give him another chance if only to prove that I could be the bigger person. I started to decipher my own desires and found them contrary to the situation I found myself in.

That's never sat right with me.

I'm of the mindset that, once you're in a position to make yourself happy and have the inclination to do so, you should take it. If you're mad stay mad. But once you reach the point where you're capable of true happiness I don't much see the point in delaying that happiness. Don't postpone joy, right?

That's why I'm here. And that's why how he feels, aside from knowing he still feels a strong bond and/or attraction to me, is almost irrelevant to that state of my emotions. People say I should tailor my expectations to that of his, that it's only going to pain me in the end if I put more into this relationship than I get out of it. Yet I've never operated that way. Gosh. I've never even put one thought into holding back based on how someone else felt. If I'm reserved it's because in my nature to be reserved and not overtly demonstrative, not because I'm tailoring how I'm feeling to suit someone else's needs. My sisters, my friends, all tell me that he treated me horribly and that he deserves to dangle on the hook a bit longer.

But that's never been my way. As my plans to attend to him in November when I visit him for a week or so, my ire is a condition of the past. I'm not disavowing my anger or my sadness over our break-up. But that time had its place in the sun; now it's time to let a day begin. I experienced the death of something I believed to be the realest in my life at that moment. I let it consume me to the point where I could focus on little else. I gave into the grief for awhile.

And now it's time to live again.

dw

Please Sway With Me, I Take Comfort In What Used To Be, Testing On Me, Making Lifeforms In The Dirt, Breaking Out In Bravery

2012-08-23T02:26:00.000-07:00

--"Sway", Mates of State

Not for nothing I let the dime fly, releasing it from my fingers as delicately as I would that of a hummingbird. I watched as it bounced harmlessly aside the plastic bucket I had been aiming for. I took a step back to the blue electrician's tape on the floor marking the next spot I was to take aim from. Again, I tossed almost politely another dime, praying that this one would be received into the receptacle at the other end of the dorm floor. When this one missed its mark as well I began to feel the eyes upon me. Dozens of college-aged men and women with hundreds, maybe thousands, of their eyes trained upon me. I was failing at my endeavor and they all knew it. When I stepped back one more time, a cry came up from the back of the crowd. "Don't choke," the disembodied voice said in jest. I decided to pretend it was not directed towards me. Perhaps there was an individual chewing on a particularly dangerous piece of food, I thought. I heaved the dime the now looming distance of the floor at the four buckets, now mocking me with their inaccessibility. This dime managed to hit the rim before it fell out. My efforts were not entirely in vain, I can tell you that much, if not entirely productive either. A gust of wind in a stilted calm upon the ocean, I vowed that this moment would be where my fortunes would change for the better. When the next dime went in there was a slight hush in the crowd as if one of their core beliefs had been shattered. By then I had gained the confidence to make the last coin from even further back, knowing that impossibilities are an illusion. Everything I can do is anything I can think of.

That's what this relationship is like, the ability to make a connection repeatedly, even while moving further away as time goes on. Yet somehow the impossible becomes possible when we put in the effort and we don't let the inner naysayers of the past, the circumstances, and the unforeseen future enter in our calculations. We win because we believe we can. That's how that goes.

dw

She's Just One of Those Corners In My Mind, And I Just Put Her Right Back With The Rest, That's The Way It Goes, I Guess

2012-08-20T21:25:00.001-07:00

--"Set Adrift On Memory Bliss", PM Dawn

I was watching The Newsroom last night when they utilized a poem I hadn't heard in ages. Robert Herrick's "Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May (To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time)" was a poem I heard more than once in errant English classes throughout elementary school and high school. While it was never one of my favorites, I never forget it either. It was one of those poems that stuck in my craw for whatever reason when so many poems I read during that time in my life fell away.

I understood the poem's message. The philosophy of striking while the iron is hot is a classic theme and one you can't go wrong in espousing. What's the alternative? Telling people to be lazy to accomplish everything they want in life? That's not much of a message. And therein lies my initial underestimation of the poem's virtues. I thought the message was an obvious. Have fun while you have the youth and energy to do so isn't exactly the poetic breakthrough that poets like Dickinson and Tennyson provided time after time. There's no search for meaning. There's no deciphering what the intent of the piece is. It's just out there in plain words for all to see.

But as I sat listening to the poem last night I realized that I identified with the message more now, plain as it was, and that it didn't need to be couched in symbolism. People tend to devalue writing when it seems too simple, too easy. We like to feel like we're the only ones to sift the grain from the chaff. We like to feel that we're the only ones who can find meaning in something. The truth is that everyone has ideas that originate from something they read or see. Whether it's intentional on the creator's part, mankind's lot in life is to ruminate about the questions they posses about life, the universe, and everything and to find answers wherever they can find it.

It's the same thing with memories.

People are always revisiting their past, trying to correct the memories in their head with the proper course of action. If they didn't there wouldn't be a need for poems like Herrick's. If people could just accomplish everything they set out for there wouldn't be much point in telling them that opportunities sometimes only come around the once.

----

My life isn't perfect. I know that. I've made a lot of mistakes, especially when it comes to people. But I can honestly say that there were plenty of chances I took that other people might not have. There are perks to being an impulsive creature of whimsy. I've met people I probably should have never met. I've been to places that many people never take the time to find. And I possess some memories of some days and nights that no one can say they have anything close to resembling in their own chest full of memories. I've learned from people like Breanne that you don't always remember the times you tried something new out and it fell flat on its face. However, you always remember the times you never tried something at all when you really wanted to.

I don't know what the percentages are. Maybe 80% of the time I said, fuck it, let's just go try it, it's worked out. It may not have worked exactly as planned, it may not have worked out even close to perfectly, but 80% of the time I've been relatively happy with the results. The other 20% of the time when my decisions have resulted in utter failure were just the universe's way of saying I can't be lucky all the time. There's no pointing in making decisions if there wasn't the possibility of disappointment, humiliation, or utter failure, right?

That's why at this moment I'm content to say that in the field of rosebud gathering I've done the work. I may not have taken them all home, but no one can accuse of me of sloughing off my duties either.

Just call me mojo, rosebud gatherer.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Honey, I've Been Really Struggling To Think Of You And I, And All The Mess, You've Often Bought And Sold, The Love You Gave Ebbs And Flows, So I Don't Think I Should See You Again

2012-08-19T04:23:00.000-07:00

--"Careless Love", Camera Obscura

Toby Claire Frisson was fourteen when I realized I had real affection for her. I was thirty-one and not really looking for her, or anyone for that matter. But like all happy accidents she fell into my life with all the subtlety of a comet crashing into Earth. She was smart, funny, articulate, and, most importantly, full of this energy for expressing herself in her own way that I recognized immediately.

----

I remember the story she told me which pushed me over the edge from casual interest into full-blown affection. She had told me that as a kid, at around seven or eight, she had worn oven mitts due to her germ phobia, a phobia which persists even today. She had told me that the oven mitts were the only defense against her hands persistently getting dirtied. You see, it wasn't the germs that bothered her. It was the idea that she could get her hands as clean as possible, but there was no possible safeguard from them getting sullied again. Her bathroom, her own bedroom, and even her own desk at school she felt some semblance of control over. Her hands, though? Those she felt she could never get quite clean enough.

Thus, the oven mitts.

I forget what she told me about how she handled school since she obviously couldn't bring the mitts to school. I do remember, however, that she would place them on her hands whenever it came to walking outside her home or anything involving the possible contamination of her hands. That was her existence whenever she wasn't at school, being the girl who couldn't touch anything--not directly, at any rate. She was the girl who had to stifle her sense of exploration for fear of getting too close. Even now she agrees it was no way to live.

But one day she read a poem by Cecilia Woloch called "On Faith" that changed her life completely. She was eight-years-old and reading some of her sister Nora's English books. She didn't understand every word. She knew that there was more to the piece than she could possibly comprehend at her young age. But she also knew that what she could decipher was something new and exciting to her. She knew there was power in those particular set of words that other words she had been called upon to read did not possess. She wanted to harness that power, tame it somehow. That was when she decided that she wanted to be one of those people who could shape thoughts and ideas into something more than information. She wanted to be one of those people who could chisel words into art, give soul to the page in her own special way. In that effort she began to read every poetry book she could get her hands on. She began requesting more novels, and short story collections, and literary journals. She started keeping notes in class and at home every time an author or poet sounded interesting to her. She began to construct her own sense of style when it came to writing.

For that the oven mitts had to come off. She very well couldn't write with the blasted things on, now could she? Sure, at first, it seemed unnatural to her to go hours at a time without the safety net of cloth around her delicate digits. And, at first, she balked at leaving them off after she was done writing. Slowly, but surely, though she stopped feeling the need to have them off when she wasn't writing. Eventually, she stopped feeling the need to wear them altogether. She said that inspiration could strike her at any moment. It just wouldn't do to have the gossamer thread between thought and words unravel because she couldn't get her mitts off fast enough.

She essentially learned to overcome a slightly superstitious practice because of her love of writing. Her passion for her art was that compelling to her.

That's the tale that did me in, because anyone who could overcome a phobia because of her love for the written word instantly gained my respect, my admiration, and, I suppose, a bit of my heart too. After all, it's not like I ever cured my phobia of heights, ghosts, or aliens because I loved writing that much.

----

I also recognized another aspect of her character that made us kindred spirits. She didn't have a lot of friends. Not really. Not at all. She knew people and people knew of her, but she never solicited the popularity and attention that so many of her age seem to aspire too. She was like me in that as long as she had a few close individuals of distinguishable merit she was find. People like Jack and Françoise she came to depend on and no one else. No one else mattered, not when measured against the considerable bar set by her close friends and her two sisters. It was exactly the same pattern of establishing a tight circle of friends and letting no one else in. I mean--she wasn't anti-social. Neither was I. She just knew that the more people she let into her life the more her life felt a separate entity from the content of her character. She didn't want her life devolving into a series of displays to keep up appearances. She didn't want her life to overtake her life, and the less people you have to please the more you can concentrate on being who you really are. That was my philosophy and I instantly recognized the same rationale to her lifestyle--like attracts like.

I don't know if I ever had the opportunity to fall in love with her. To me it felt as inevitable as an ocean wave eventually crashing into shore. There was no turning back the tide. She was young, certainly pretty, and she cared about me and my life like no one had cared about them in quite a long time. At first glance, it shouldn't have happened. I shouldn't have let it happen. But, as evidenced here, I don't know how to fight against how I'm feeling. I've never been quite good at denying an impression, an impulse, or a gut instinct. I wanted to get to know her more so I got to know her more. I wanted to hear from her as often as possible so we talked up and down the whole week for years after we first met. I wanted to like her so I liked her. I wanted to find somebody to love again so I volunteered her for the spot.

To be clear, she was never an unwilling participant. I never had to "convince" her. I never her to cajole her. She felt the way she felt. And she said all her words without prompting. There was no trickery involved. What it was at the time and maybe what it continues to be is an understanding between two people that the two of them only work because they choose to involve themselves. It was a meeting of two like-minded people who didn't see any particular need to leave one another. I don't know how to explain it better than that. We didn't have the ability to describe what we were; it just was. And for a time it worked.

When I visited her in 2008 for a few days it wasn't like meeting her for the first time, not really. We jumped into conversations we'd been having for eighteen months by that point. We didn't have to tell each other our life stories, we both knew them. We didn't even need to figure out what to call each other, we had our nicknames already picked out. About the only thing I needed to do was get used to the manner in which her beguiling eyes functioned as a signpost to her emotions. About the only thing that took my breath away was just how full and bright and starry her smile was in person. About the only thing that I couldn't have imagined is the way her hand felt in mine in those first few instances she deigned to give it to me.

We never slept together. That much is true. We never as much stepped foot in my hotel room during those three days. What we did, what we felt appropriate, was just go out. We had dinner. She took me on a tour of her hometown. She took me to meet her sister Faye, the only person in her family who knew her secret. We talked. A lot. It was as chaste as a couple of first few dates could be. I was getting used to the idea that the two of us could be okay as a couple. It was the same way it worked with Breanne when I visited her the first time. It always takes me a few days to be okay with seeing someone that young, that sure of herself, as somebody capable of wanting me. It always takes me a few tries to get past the crazy notion that somebody this desirable could actually want me back. The only difference between my first meeting with Breanne in person and my first meeting with Toby in person, aside from the fact I met B.'s parents and it was Christmas at the time, was the fact that I had to leave just as I had reached that comfortable state with her.

The next time I visited her in 2009 we did sleep together. Napping counts, right? I learned from my mistake and spent six days in Louisville with both Toby and her sister Faye. Not only that but Toby and I felt it appropriate to introduce me to her family. For the most part we didn't lie... all that much. I was Faye's friend from California, it being that much easier to explain how a thirty-three-year-old could be friends with a twenty-year-old rather than a sixteen-year-old. I was also on good terms with Toby after speaking with her more than a few times in the last few years. And I had had a keen desire to visit Kentucky all my life so when Nora, the eldest Frisson girl, had invited me to the wedding I had no choice but to accept. We just didn't inform them that I was Toby's friend first and foremost, that Toby and I had spoken quite a bit in the last three years we had known each other, and that this trip to Louisville was not my first nor was it my first time visiting to see her. You could call them white lies. All I know was I got to go to the wedding as a friend of the family and I got to escort both Toby and Faye around Kentucky, Ohio, and parts of Indiana for almost a straight week. And, more amazingly, those trips out of Louisville included overnight stays where nobody questioned the sleeping arrangements. Naps, that's what we're calling them and that's all you'll ever hear me speak on the subject.

After that I fell hard. And fast. I know I'm an impulsive person. It comes with the territory of being a romantic idealist. Patterns abound when you basically have one overrunning motif in your life. I couldn't stop thinking of her. I couldn't stop wanting to fly over there to be with her. I couldn't stop planning how to accomplish that. It's extraordinary the depths I'll fall when I go crazy for a girl. It's like I stop reviewing any plan of action, and just go. I think that's how Breanne lives all her life, but for me it's rather situational. It pretty much only happens when I think I can't live without a person.

That's the thing about feelings. Like any idea no one knows where they come from. They just appear. I got into my head that I had feelings for her and I went with it. I didn't take time to assess where they might originate from. I didn't take the effort to sort out what was genuine affection and what was impulsive whimsy. I suppose I never actually sifted the sand from the the dirt to know the ideas I was planting would be in rooted in something solid. I wanted to love her and so I did, or at least I fooled myself into thinking so. As much as I wanted to compare it to the case with Breanne, the very notion that that relationship is entering its third decade is proof enough that we did our due diligence and made sure we had secure footing in our journey together. There was no such vetting with Toby. We went with our guts, moved along too quickly, and let ourselves into the trap of being enamored with the idea of one another.

I loved her. I still do. But I wanted to love her so much more. I wanted to love her as much as I thought she deserved, as much as I thought I was capable of loving her. I fell in love with the girl with the big words and even bigger eyes, the fairy-tale-colored glasses, and the heart that was as fine as a bee's wing, so transparent and fragile. I wanted to love her to bits and pieces. Sometimes that wanting is enough, but in this instance it wasn't.

It was a relationship built on a love that was never defined. Did I see a future for the two of us? Marriage and kids and all that accompanied that dream? No. Did I have any clue as to how the particulars of a long-distance relationship would work? No. Did my reach exceed my grasp? Yes. I was a boy longing for the cookie jar, not caring whether I'd break the jar in my overzealousness. That's exactly what happened. I pushed too fast for too long and found myself at the other end of a burnout.

I just one day reached a point when all my doubts and fears came flush with the notion that I didn't really know what I was doing. One day I just called her to basically ask her who she was really. I asked her what it was she thought we were doing, and how much we were fooling ourselves. And when I didn't like her answer I shied away. Suddenly I couldn't defend our relationship to myself. I turned to her and asked her to defend it. Naturally, her answers sounded as false as mine. Naturally, I used that as an excuse to distance myself from her. She didn't deserve that kind of treatment. It wasn't her fault we failed as relationship planners. It wasn't her fault she loved me more than I could love her. Somebody always has to play that part, right? She was the right person at the wrong time or maybe the wrong person at the right time. I kept playing the game even though I didn't what winning entailed, while she was playing a game she didn't it was impossible for her to win.

Her going to college was just an excuse. Telling her she was getting too old was just the cowardly way of saying I had changed my mind. I could have easily made her schooling work for us. There's no huge difference to me in visiting her at Notre Dame or visiting her in Louisville. They're both just as far. And gently nudging her away from coming to USC? That was selfishness. I knew I wanted to end things between us and I didn't want her committing to California when I knew California was not where I wanted the two of us to be together in. I didn't want the sequence of events to be her come to my state because of me, break up with her, and then her being stuck in California for at least a year because I had somehow misled her into coming in the first place. I wanted a clean break. I also didn't mean to tell her she gotten fat or ugly or old or whatever else I had yelled in frustration to her. Sometimes I break under pressure, choosing to say the most hurtful thing I can rather than to tell the truth even if it would be less hurtful in the long run. Honesty sometimes doesn't just elude me, sometimes it escapes from me entirely.

The truth is I never knew how to love her. Not really. Not ever. After not talking to her for eight months I understand that now. I tried to apply the same principles that I had employed in earlier relationships. That's always a mistake. Toby is not Breanne. Toby is not Ilessa. Toby is not DeAnn. Toby is not Kerri Ray. Hell, sixteen-year-old Toby isn't even nineteen-year-old Toby, the age she is now. I should have looked upon her as the unique, truly special creature she is. You can't box her in as being something you have a template for. You shouldn't even want to. I should have loved her on her own terms, as much or as little as I could honestly afford to give her. That would have been the fair thing to do.

----

And now that she's back? And now that she's willing to give us another chance after eight months of hating my guts? I feel I can be honest with her. It might not sound as sweet as it did before. The reality of the situation isn't as pretty a picture as I portrayed earlier. But there's a clarity to what we feel for each other now. There's no bullshit. There's no expectations for everything to come up rosy, but there's also no fear on my part that everything's going to end in fire and tears and venom. There's just this calm that washes over everything when you know you're speaking to someone you connect so well with on so many different levels. Because that's never changed. Not one bit. There's just this feeling of bliss that overrides the taste of betrayal or bitterness. What we are is what we are. And for now that's good enough.

I don't want any more. I don't need any more. I just want her as much or as little as it's in my power to do. And, for her part, I think she believes in the same thing.

We don't need all the feelings to be in place right now. We never did. We were never one to have a large circle of friends and I guess it's appropriate that we don't need the full spectrum of emotions to be there either. Whether you're in the first few steps of a new relationship or finding your footing again after stumbling for a bit, I think it's just nice to have that chance of something real, something happy. Because the alternative is a life of loneliness, and wishing you had your chances to do over again.

So, yeah, Toby, this I can tell you is true. I may not have loved you the most or known you the longest, but you still represent my best chance at something lasting.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

I Need You Like A Heart Needs A Beat, But It's Nothing New, I Loved You With A Fire Red, But Now It's Turning Blue

2012-02-28T03:33:00.000-08:00

--"Apologize", Timbaland featuring One Republic

You remember listening to the noiseless fury outside, the calm collection of silence and anger that hearing bad news entails. This wasn't your husband. He wasn't your guy. Your husband wouldn't hurt you like this. Not like this. Not him. But the news was true. He wanted the two of you to seriously consider getting a divorce.

"How can you even be mad, Breanne?" he asked in that delicate patter of his, belying his own ire. "You're the one who cheated on me, remember? You're the one who started all of this."

That was all the reason he needed. That was all the reason he was going to give you. And it was true, you're the one who had strayed first in this marriage. You had placed your own impulsiveness before the health of your relationship. You had decided to tear down all the trust you had built up in the last five years for something ephemeral. You had struck the first blow. But to have him question your right to feel betrayed yourself was rather insulting. Just because you had cut out his heart first doesn't mean yours suddenly becomes invulnerable. You may have brought the wrath of Heaven down upon you, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt something fierce. When you decided to work it all out, after you had reconsidered, you thought that would be enough to get the two of you back on track. You thought all you had to do was show your penitence and that would be enough of a first step towards reconciling with your husband. You didn't expect that he would want to drag out the proceedings himself. That wasn't your husband. That wasn't your guy.

Yet here he was, asking for a pound of flesh. If you didn't know him better you would have thought he was raking you over the coals for retribution. No, this was something different entirely. This was your husband telling you in no uncertain terms that he had lost faith in you, in what you represented. This was him telling you he wanted out. You had caused him to suffer and he wasn't sure you weren't about to do it again.

"I'm trying here, honey. Can't you see that? I don't see why you have to decide this now, now that we're in the midst of finally working our way back..."

"Back to what? Back to what we once were? We'll never be that again."

"Back to something better than we once were," you said simply.

"And what do you think that is? Where do you think we have to go from here?"

The truth was you didn't know. You hadn't thought it out that far. You knew you wanted your husband back. In what capacity you had no clue. Your future was cloudy. Your future days were blurry at best. But planning for the future was never your strong suit. Breanne doesn't think; she just goes--that's what the saying was. And what your mind was telling you right now was that you had to be together with your husband. No more detail than that was necessary. To separate, to divorce, was not in your plans. You couldn't let that happen. You would never let something opposite to what you wanted happen. You always got your way. That's why it was called your way.

Maybe it was foolish to think that you could just come back and he would just take you back. You've always had an easier time dispensing forgiveness than asking for it. That probably stems from your sense of infallibility, your vanity, or maybe your sense of entitlement. But you weren't asking for much. You weren't asking him to forget what you'd done. All you were asking him was to forgive you. That didn't seem so difficult. Divorcing you wasn't forgiveness. That was quite the opposite, actually. Divorcing you meant that whatever your efforts to show contrition had been met with failure. You hadn't done enough, said enough to show just how sorry you were.

You would think this would prompt you to do more to earn his trust once more. That's not how you approached obstacles, though.

If he couldn't forgive you that was a failing on his part. You were always taught that all you had to do was show you were sorry, apologize earnestly, and then await the inevitable blessing of being forgiven. It had never occurred to you that if you went through the prior steps that the result would be any different than absolute forgiveness. You weren't even aware of there being any other consequence. From Church to your own business dealings to television and movies--you do wrong, you ask forgiveness, you were forgiven. That's how the progression worked.

"You can't just wish yourself out of this situation. I don't know if we can ever work around this. I don't know if I can ever trust you again. I'm thinking this would be the best solution for both of us."

"How can it be the best for both of us if I don't agree with it? For it to be the best for both of us we both have to want it, to see it. Right now I don't see it being the best solution at all."

"I do."

"I know you do. I just don't understand why, sugar."

And that's when he walked away, without any further explanation. At the time you thought you had won. He didn't mention any talk of divorce for the rest of the night. But it wasn't till a few weeks later, in therapy, that you realized he hadn't let go of the idea. He had just come to the realization that you weren't ready to see the truth yet. You weren't ready to see that asking forgiveness isn't the same as being deserving of it. You weren't ready to see that wanting to be cleansed of your sins wasn't the same as being clean. You weren't ready to see that wanting to be somebody's wife wasn't the same as somebody wanting you to be their wife.

It would take you a few more months to realize that in a marriage, more than any other relationship, was about giving what you want and what you thought you deserved, and putting in the effort to make sure your optimal outcome came to pass. You couldn't just expect your dreams to happen; you actually had to put in the spit and gristle to make sure that they did. It took you awhile to realize that being in love meant sacrificing being happy sometimes. Sometimes being in love meant making the other person happy in every way at the expense of your pride, your vanity, and, yes, even your stubbornness.

Breanne

It's Sixteen Miles To The Promised Land, And I'm Doing The Best I Can

2012-02-23T00:54:00.000-08:00

--"With Arms Outstretched", Rilo Kiley

I started a new blog:

Sixteen Miles

In my own words,

This is a site about you and all those memorable times that life thrust upon you in or around your car. This is about all those late-night drives, conversations in the pouring rain in the parking lot, and the pleasant surprises you had while on the 210. It's about a record of your life.

One mile at a time.

I felt it was time for something new. I haven't grown tired of this site yet, but sometimes I miss the interaction. That's what I hope 16 miles will be about, a place for people to send in the kind of stories I like to read. For some reason that always happens to me. I always get myself into stories involving sitting in a car somewhere with somebody I care about. Sometimes it isn't a huge deal. But other times the huge life-affirming or life-destroying events happen to me out of nowhere. I wanted a place to capture that.

----

Before I started driving I didn't think in terms of this happened on this day or this happened on that day. I remembered the experience more--first day of school, first kiss, first heartbreak, &c...--but I never bothered to pin down the day on a calendar. I never kept a journal before the internet. I hardly ever took pictures. I just remembered what happened for what it was.

When I started driving, though, I noticed that a lot of more times I could remember because I could look to my odometer and see how long ago something happened. It's like my car was keeping a silent record of the comings and goings of my life. It occurred to me that somebody could keep a kind of record of their days just by the miles they've put on their car. I certainly could. If I looked back at my blog I'd have to say 50% of my most memorable times involved a car somewhere. Whether I was driving somewhere in one, parked in one, or just sitting on the curb next to one, it's difficult to have a day go by where I'm not near my car when something pivotal happens.

So that's what I thought of when my car hit 34,839 miles the other day--a site where good folks could post all the happenings of their life and where they were when it happened. More importantly, they could post up at what mileage the golden moments of their life took place so that way any time they stepped into their car they could realize how long ago (or how recently) their world was changed.

The format's simple. I don't want anything too long. Five hundred words should do. And all you have to do is title the post with the mileage on your car and send me the idea through the twitter account Sixteen Miles. If I like the idea I'll reply back for a more in-depth article to post it here.

I only hope that sharing the experience here will remind them of the good times people had or maybe take the sting a bit out of the bad times.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

When The Night Falls On You, You Don't Know What To Do, Nothing You Confess, Could Make Me Love You Less

2012-02-16T11:01:00.000-08:00

--"I'll Stand By You", The Pretenders

One of my fondest memories from the last twenty years has nothing to do with Breanne, DeAnn, or Tara. In fact, it barely has to do with Jina and she was the one standing right next to me.

It was a day in July of 1995. Her whole family and I had decided to go for a walk. Seeing as my family never just went out walking together for anything, it was a nice change of pace. I hardly remember what we were talking about. I hardly remember the circumstances of how we ended up where we did. I just remember being caught up in talking to my best friend at the time, of just being into her, and thinking how I had made the right decision in coming out to visit her for her fifteenth birthday.

The next thing I knew the two of us were walking together across the bridge alone. Her mom, her sister, basically everyone but me and her had decided to stop short of the bridge. I don't know if it was intentional--I'd like to think it was--but it left the pair of us alone on the bridge. Once I noticed that she and I stopped where we were at. We had, for the lack of a better word, a moment. I looked at her, she looked at me. It's what Mia Wallace referred to as two friends sharing a comfortable silence that didn't need any punctuation. The sun was bright, the breeze was lightly blowing everything, and I truly didn't have a care in the word other than soaking in every moment. I can't speak for her, but for me, it was one of those perfect instances that recalled a film where you know it's just too good to be true and that instances like that don't actually happen. But for those few seconds, they did.

I brushed the bangs out of her eyes--as I was wont to do in those days. Our eyes lingered on each other for a couple more seconds, and then we walked back to rejoin her family. And that was it, that's the memory that's seared into my brain--a whole bunch of nothing. Glances, nothing more.

I know the whole affair insignificant in the grand scope of life, especially considering the horrendous decisions I made in regards to Jina a scant few weeks later. But that was a time I felt completely secure with another person. Jina or not--those moments don't come along all too often. I find myself even today thinking today how that one event, or non-event, truly was free of bitterness or stress. I find myself believing that one day for those few minutes I was a perfect person to someone and I truly mattered. It was one of those times where I knew I cared about somebody or something other than myself--where I had no doubt that I was a good person.

As aforementioned, those times don't come around often. Sometimes it isn't about falling in love with a person or wrapping a moment in romantic notions of attraction. Sometimes what drives a moment of connection is just how much you like being in someone's company and how much they like being in yours. Without words. Without agendas. Without the added pressure of it all having to lead somewhere.

Sometimes it's about two people standing on a bridge, looking at each other un-ironically, and seeing each other plainly.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Oh, But Boy Do I Remember The Strain Of Her Refrain, And The Nights We Spent Together, And The Way She Called My Name

2012-02-15T02:53:00.000-08:00

--"Dixie Chicken", Little Feat

Enough time has passed I believe for me to start this little project up again. I don't know if I truly needed the last two months to collect my thoughts or if it was more of a cooling off period. I know how I get. I know what my writing becomes when I write in the heat of the moment. No good comes of it. It all sounds like thunder--full of fury, but ultimately leaving nothing physical behind. It's not the first time I've lost somebody and I'm probably thinking it won't be the last.

It reminds me that when it comes right down to it there's only a handful of people I can count on. While I can't stop myself from feeling a little saddened by the loss, the loss isn't something that's going to define my life. You can't define your life by what's missing from it. That's like describing a song by what you're not hearing, a painting by what you're not seeing. I have too many people in my life to constantly tether it to the absence, noticeable or not, of an individual. If she comes back, she comes back. That's why I'm not taking down the header because, when it comes down to it, I'm not the one walking away from her. My door is always open, my phone's always on, and she knows where to find me.

----

What I've been working on for the last few weeks is a little 'ole card game that was inspired by The Name of the Wind, the best book I've read in the last year. It's a trick-taking game called Corners that utilizes partnerships and powers, all aspects I really admire. It isn't my most creative endeavor--there's only so much you can do with a trick-taking game--but it's a solid game and I've been having fun playing it with local friends and friends from my boardgaming group. I don't know if it's going to go anywhere. I want it to, but I know the likelihood that it will be published is somewhat less than a dream right now.

One thing that it does have going for it is that I received encouraging words from the author, Patrick Rothfuss, when I mentioned to him that I had designed a card game based on the one mentioned in his book. He wrote back:

I'd be curious to hear the rules for your game, and maybe even try a hand or two. But right now I'm absolutely burried in work, and if you e-mailed them to me, they'd just sit on my computer while I ignored them in order to get other things done. Then I'd feel guilty.

If you dropped me a line in a couple of months though, I might have a little free brainspace to devote to the project....

pat

So there is that. I mean--the best case scenario would be I design a game he likes and he allows me to use the Kingkiller Chronicle name to promote it. I wouldn't even mind giving up some profits if it meant exposure to the hordes of loyal readers his books have. Hell, I'd feel honored just to have something I created be a somewhat small part of that universe. The worse case scenario would be to develop this project on my own, change the name, and have the only copy in existence because all the companies I contacted find it unpublishable. Even that wouldn't be so bad because I like playing it, and, it being a partnership game and all, I know at least three other people willing to play it.

That's kind of where I'm at right now. Unemployed, unattached, and yet still searching to do something that makes me happy even if it doesn't land me a job or the girl. I don't want to be the guy chasing down every hope only to be hurt again. It doesn't mean I'm going to give up on my dreams of happiness, it doesn't mean I'm not working hard to make my life somewhat more presentable. I'm just not willing to give up my self-respect or my sanity to do something desperate to get my game published or, in the former case, to get somebody back I deeply miss. There's a time and a place for sacrifice, for stowing away one's pride, but I don't think that time has come yet. I'm still the master of my universe and that's a place I'm intent on staying for the foreseeable future. It's taken me two months to realize that just because you don't get who or what you want doesn't mean you need to be sad over it. Plenty of people lose people or dreams that were important to them.

It just means you put your efforts into new projects, into new people. Or, better yet, it just means you go back to those endeavors, those individuals, that you know you can fall back on. Whether that's a friend you've known for almost two decades now and who has been nothing but understanding when you come bitching to her at five in the morning or that's a website you've been working on for the last eight years now--you have places to go to so you can mitigate the sting of disappointment and bitterness. True, you'll always remember the golden days when you felt like you had more than you have now.

But just because you've lost a step or two, it doesn't mean you stop walking forward. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other and eventually you'll be right again.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

No Matter How I Try To Convince Myself, This Time I Won't Lose Control, One Look In Your Blue Eyes And Suddenly, My Heart Can't Tell You No

2011-12-15T22:52:00.000-08:00

--"My Heart Can't Tell You No", Sara Evans

A wise man once said that life is war and sometimes the casualties are everyone you've ever known. The truth, sad as it may be, is that I'm not destined to have people in my life for lengthy periods of time. While I cannot entirely shift the blame away from me, there are moments where I truly believe that such is my lot in life. I'm simply not someone who suffers friendships or relationships for any durable amount of years or even months.

Toby is no more--at least not in the way I'm accustomed to knowing her. While I cannot say she died, for all intents and purposes she ceases to be somebody I can reliably count on or consider friendly to me. If life really is a war I'd have to consider her an enemy of the state and all subsequent communications between us as unabashedly hostile.

I doubt you'll be seeing her any longer. I doubt you'll be hearing her perspective on anything contained here within. It truly is the end of an era.

For all of you asking why nobody has been posting here recently, that's the only explanation I can give. Lucy kept suggesting that I get back on the horse, as they say, but my heart just wasn't in it. It would have been lying to say that any other topic was relevant to me. It would have been awkward to say that there wasn't so much going on in the world that I wanted to relate to as much as I wanted to discuss in detail as what was going on in my own heart.

I was recently reading a post on opu.net where the lovely Jewel Staite related how she had been going through the process of a divorce from her husband. What she wanted to get across was the fact she wasn't relating this change in her status to elicit sympathy. On the contrary, she was relating the news in order to convey how, yes, her living conditions had changed and to explain a somewhat noticeable absence from her writing. Such is the same message that I'd like to get across as well. I mean--I've been hurt before. This brand of heartache is a particular favorite of mine. And I don't believe it shall be the last time my sadness shall get the best of me. But I also know that, contrary to what others might think of me, I don't always to devolve into obsessing over the same old troubles I possess. I believe that three or so months to clear my head in private is sufficient enough to have done just that.

I still have lovely praises to shine upon the original Miss Frisson. The time for name-calling and admonishments had quietly passed on like a ship sailing in the night. There will be no incidents. There will be no rants. There will be no tirades against her. What there will be is the unspoken hope that someday hers and my path shall cross someday, and I will leave it at that.

Because as much as I'd like to hold this tear between us against her, I just can't hold that bitterness in me any longer. Not any more.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

On And On And On We Go, Just Like A Carousel That's Lost Control, And We Don't Know Why, We Don't Know Why, We Go And Go And Go In Circles

2011-09-08T21:10:00.000-07:00

--"Carousel", Paper Route

Someone once said that life is bigger than you. I've always envisioned that in some respects I may just have been bigger than it. After all, when you're in the midst of living your life, when you're in the middle of what some would term a successful career, you don't always have the means to slow down and contemplate how there is so much more out there for you. All you know is all you know. You forget to concern yourself with the rest of the world that doesn't involve you in it.

Hell's bells, if there is anything I have a reputation for I reckon it's being someone who holds a spotlight to herself. That's the thing about holding yourself up for all the world to see, you don't always have the wherewithal to see out into the world. I play my part and hold a breath while waiting for the applause. You don't take stock of the audience watching you, except to gauge their reaction. You don't suss out what they're going on in their own life. You don't take the time to worry about their concerns--not like you would for the folks you feel close to. I can honestly see that about myself, how I put the world at large as there to acknowledge me and not vice-versa.

However, it's recently been pointed out to me that I may lead a semi-charmed life where I never really had to depend on other as others had to depend on me. I've always been the caregiver. I've always been the rock. So it's never fallen to me to understand what it's like to have concerns and no one to turn to. I've never had the misfortune to be adrift in this world alone. I've had family and friends at my beck and call whenever I needed to beckon or call.

And that was my life.

But as I've gotten older I've realized that maybe the ride I'm on isn't exactly the only ride in the park, you know? I've been so busy going around the merry-go-round with the same circle of folks riding alongside me that I've never really experienced the novelty of what life has to offer. I imagine I've never really been single, never really been on my own. I lived in my parents' house until I went to college. I started dating my husband my third year at college. There hasn't been a period of life where I've truly roughed it in one place for a lengthy duration. As much as I moan about being independent and being the boss, I reckon I've always surrounded myself with company. You can't be in charge if you have nobody to be in charge of, you know? I don't know what it's like to only be fending for myself without the luxury of somebody to support me at a moment's notice.

The way I see it now, though, is that that's not always going to be the case. There's going to be a point in time where I really need to start living for me and start seeing what else there is to this world. For while I'll always have Greg around and Fanny and Patrick, the days are slowly evolving where I'm not so much in their lives as I used to be. By extension they're not always in my life like they used to be either. Frankly, there are more days where it's just Greg and I home alone than days where somebody's interests come intruding into mine.

While that does make me a bit sad, it's not a sadness that I'm entirely fighting. What use is there in fighting the inevitable? I rather welcome it. It's brought me to the realization that all the time I've spent going back to the well of the familiar and the comfortable I could have spent seeking something new, something novel. The well's always going to be there regardless of how often I drink from it. I say it's high time I start trekking off on my own without the safety of the water nearby. It's time to explore the wilderness of my life and find new sights that might astonish or amaze me. It's time to wander the world and perhaps let a bit more of the world wander into me.

It's time to get off this carousel for a bit and try a new ride.

Breanne

Days Pass And Turn Into Weeks, When We Don't Even Speak, We Just Lay Wide Awake And Pretend We're Asleep

2011-09-06T18:06:00.000-07:00

--"Changing", The Airborne Toxic Event

Mojo,

Please refrain from any speeches of encouragement, or lack thereof. My intention wasn't anything so sinister. My venom has proven short-lived. This strange discomfort that passes for our friendship will pass soon and then these lonesome nights will be over forever. But until we are again made whole I am feeling the loss of what we had every tiny minute of the day and night. Perhaps you may not understand this, but sometimes when I miss you the most, it's the hardest to write to you. It's the hardest to even picture you when the heart wants what it wants that much.

But you knew that. Your perception on what I might profess to be feeling and what I hide away is keenly acute. It's a gift, alas, I do not share with you. You always know when I make myself talk to you, show interest in you, even though my soul might be slowly fading away from the inside out. You know my ache at that moment when it is hardest to tell you at all.

I fear if we were together in person, you'd feel how strong it is. You'd feel its sickly sweetness, its absent melancholy. You might even grow to love the sad tenderness of it all--that is, if you could gloss over the amount of hurt you've caused in your proximity. That's one of the reasons why I could never be sorry for the distance, though they have bothered me a time or two, because they afforded me the space to parse the events of my life in relation to you. The changes I make don't all seem like mistakes when nobody else seems to be watching, I can tell you that much.

Mojo, there's nothing in the world that has the potential to please me as much as you--but I acquiesce to your point. Potential is not actuality. The guarantees which accompany life are slim, and grow slimmer by the minute. I just feel that all the material things of this world are nothing. I would just hate to live a sordid, colorless existence because that would only cause you to love me less. And less. And I'd do anything to keep your respect for me, to keep that potential for your fondness, for my own. I don't want to merely live. I want to love first and live incidentally.

But try not to dwell on the things you cannot in good conscience give me at present. You've trusted me with more of yourself than I sometimes know what to do with. It's so much more than anyone else has deigned to give me. It's so much more than sometimes I feel I am worth. Gosh. Sometimes I feel it's infinitely easier to think of myself outside of life than to think of me in it. I often wonder if people have attempted to deliberately think of life without me. And then I think of people like you and all the rest of my friends who I know would feel the void my absence would leave behind.

That gives me the hope to soldier through the adversity of my current days. That gives me the courage to go on placing this brave smile on my face when all the while my spirit gently weeps for the boy who cannot ever possibly love me back.

All my heart,

Toby

You See I've Forgotten If They're Green Or They're Blue, Anyway, The Thing Is What I Really Mean, Yours Are The Swetest Eyes I've Ever Seen

2011-09-01T23:42:00.000-07:00

--"Your Song", Elton John

Seventh anniversary and you don't think I was going to come back for this?

Dear Toby,

I know it's been awhile. And for awhile there I wasn't sure I was going to come back. We both needed a break from each other. While I don't know if two months is quite the respite that the situation calls for I know that the wait has seemed like forever. I don't know if you feel any better about me or if this just seems like a pathetic attempt to weasel my way back into your good graces, but it is what it is. I've never feigned being okay just for appearance's sake and I've never kept silent when I felt like I had important thoughts to convey.

My message to you is simple. You can't say I don't miss you or I don't care. I do care. A lot. I don't know how to make that any more clearer to you without speaking to you in person. You don't seem to want to hear it on the phone. You say it's not appropriate to have this discussion with you through e-mail. So this is the only respite I have. And maybe that's the problem we seem to be facing. Despite everything, you're finding out the hard truth that Breanne and I ran into a long time ago. Sometimes me being over here and you being over there isn't the best of situations. It's not really conducive to building anything substantial. I believe you're running into the wall where you realize that the time together truly is miniscule compared to the time apart we'll have. It's sad. It's also true.

When you told me you love me I was flattered. I don't often have that said to me. Every opportunity to receive that particular ego boost is a welcome boon. I can tell by your inflection that you truly meant it. And when I said it back to you I know I meant it. The problem lies where the definition of love falls for both of us. I love you like a niece or a good friend, or maybe someone I flirt with but never quite get serious with. I don't know--somewhere in the back of my mind I just never pictured us being serious someday. Maybe Breanne spoiled me or I'm just exhausted at the effort it would entail to give you what you want. I just know that in my current mindset I don't look upon us as a couple. And when you say you love me I can hear the romance in the catch of your throat because, believe me, I've been there too. I know what it's like to hope that all the snags and tears will work themselves out. I know what it's like to believe that love can conquer all. And I know what it's like to be let down when you find out it cannot. I've been down those roads too.

I'm not saying this to hurt you.

I'm not saying this to be cruel.

The last thing I'd want to do is drive you away, Toby. I care about you in a way that I don't know how to describe to you. I think you're smart. I think you're beautiful. I think you're talented. And I think you get me in a way few others really do get me. There's a big part of me that would like nothing better to fall madly, deeply in love with you and make all your dreams come true. But short of you coming to California permanently or me winning the lotto and have the money to just shuttle back and forth from the midwest I don't see us happening. I'm set in my ways. And that means I don't want to move unless it's a sure thing. And, fuck, if it wasn't a sure thing with Lucy then you can only imagine how I see our chances together.

You told me once that you don't get how I can get so enamored of people who lived so far away from. You didn't understand how smitten I can become about somebody I didn't really hang out with all the time. Well, now you know, because it's happened to you. For my part, it was easy to get wrapped up in you with your winning smile, your cautious outlook on life, and your eye for beauty in the simplest acts and sights. It was easy to just lose myself in your one-of-a-kind perspective on life. And, yeah, fooling around with you on my last trip kind of sealed the deal on what I suspected about my feelings for you. But I never meant to lead you on or give you false ideas about where I saw us headed. I just liked being in your company. Very often I don't know where to draw the line between keeping things safe and keeping things headed down a course that will lead to heartache and tears. I wanted to love you. I still do. But something tells me that, yet again, you're quite like me and aren't looking for the casual relationship I seemed to have been offering you. Something tells me, that like me, you've placed far too much stock in how we are "here" on-line, across the country, as to how we'll be in "reality". And I just don't know how good I've ever been able to translate taking that connection from phone calls and texts to the holding hand and kissing bits. It doesn't always work out. And there's a reason why most cases are the exception to the rule and not the rule itself.

I'm just sorry you had to go to Breanne about this, visit her down in Macon, instead of coming to me. I'm just sorry that I had to hear about it secondhand instead of you personally. And I'm just sorry it lead to what was a difficult time for this site. This site's supposed to be about our personal life; our personal lives aren't supposed to lead to the site being on hiatus because certain people can't seem to get along. You don't want that, right? And I certainly don't want that. If anything, it should have lead to further discussion here and not less.

As aforementioned I'm not looking to hurt your feelings. I really do love you and I do care what you feel for me. But you're a big girl now, Toby, and I want to treat you as such. Sulking and blockading yourself off from me isn't the way we solve our problems. And threatening to give up on me doesn't feel so much like an ultimatum to me as you being kind of bratty. I'm glad you're finally heeding my advice and letting yourself show a little more of what's going on inside. That's a good thing. But having feelings is one thing, how you act upon is the true content of your character. Frankly, I don't want to be the reason you're unhappy. But I'm also not going to be the way who smoothes everything over by myself. Reconciliation between any two people requires participation from both parties. The only reason you don't want to engage me in a dialogue is if reconciliation isn't your ultimate goal. And I really hope that isn't true.

Despite what you may think of me, I don't want to lose you. Not at all.

I would miss those eyes. And I would miss that smile too much.

You're important to me, Marion. You're important to me in so many ways, the least of which is you're the one person I can come to about Breanne when I don't want to come to Breanne about her. You've always been the outlet for some of the darker feelings I've had about my family and friends. I mean--Breanne is great in a lot of ways--but you and I share that succinct gift for wanting to be left alone some of the time. She doesn't understand that mentality like we do. Not only that, but you're the one person I can come to about understanding what it's like to live in a world where nobody watches over you when you make mistakes, where no higher power is watching over us to make everything better. You get my feeling of isolation. You know what that's like.

You're important to me, Toby. You fill my days with the idea that I can still matter to someone so much that it hurts. I mean--with my family, with all my old friends, their love is a given. But with you, with us having met only recently comparatively, it still warms my heart that I can induce such grandiose feelings in someone new. It makes me feel like I've still got it. That I've still got the mojo working--so to speak. You love me in a way that's pure and youthful and exciting, and who doesn't want that in their life?

You're important to me, Toby, in all the ways that I should tell you about everyday. I know I forget to do that sometimes. It's easy to grow complacent when you believe that certain people will stay in your life through the long haul. But if telling you that you're easily one of my most favorite people on the planet, easily one of my most beloved treasures, gets you to stick around then that's what I want to tell you, little Marion. I want to tell you that because it's the truth and because I believe it, and not just because I'm scared of you leaving me like so many others. I want to tell you that because I want you to know everything I'm feeling about--both the good and the bad. I want you to know that because, even now, I still harbor no ill will towards you.

I want you to know that because I love you. And I miss those eyes.

Whether they're more green or blue today. LOL

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Who Are You To Tell Me It'll Always Be This Way, I Close My Eyes And I Turn Around, And Leave It All Behind

2011-07-12T00:15:00.000-07:00

--"Free", Martinis

While I was watching the new miniseries Torchwood: Miracle Day I was struck with thoughts of my own mortality. For those of you who don't know, the miniseries posits what would happen in a world where people suddenly stopped dying. It doesn't matter how grotesque the accident--one individual gets skewered by several pipes--or how terminal the disease, people all over the world lose the ability to die. At first everyone believes it a blessing. However, eventually people start figuring out the dire implications. Everyday fifty thousand people die. If that process suddenly stops, then the world grows another 1.5 million every month--not to mention with more people, the more babies are born. Food and water supplies wouldn't be able to handle the surge.

What I also liked about the show was the other implications it had. If fetuses are unable to be aborted, then what does that do to the abortion debate? And if everyone is immortal, but not free from pain, then who decides who gets what medicine--especially when everyone can afford it? And if no one can die, then how do you curb violent crimes? All these issues were brought up in the pilot episode and I for one am eagerly anticipating what else the show has to offer in terms of moral dilemmas.

----

Yet it wasn't merely these mundane thoughts that stirred within me. I also began to think how such a bending of the natural order of things would affect me. Folks always talk about what they would do with the rest of their lives if they couldn't die. What risks would they take? People think being immortal would embolden them. I suppose in the short run I might feel the same way. I probably would finally take that plunge from a plane that I never said I would do. Or possibly I might attempt a fire walk that people say is invigorating. In the short run I probably would slap death in the face with a smile.

However, in the long run I think it's the fear of death that emboldens people more. When you have all the time in the world you never truly want to get around doing anything. That's at least how I operate. I need the ticking clock to push me into action. I need a deadline to make my effort mean something. Devoid of that everything would seem like busywork--a lot of nonsense that ultimately doesn't accomplish much. And I, for one, cannot abide the concept of putting effort into a project if it ultimately proves meaningless. Especially for me, I need the idea that time is running out for me to make everything I do seem important. I only have a certain amount of days left, which makes the projects I pursue take on added significance. Not merely because I choose to do it, but because I choose to do it at the expense of everything else I plan to do.

I especially began to think of the idea of mortality as motivator in regards to people who die young. People like my friend Jennifer, who barely made it into her twenties, manage to accomplish more in their short years on this planet than people who reach their sixties, seventies, or eighties. They just have that impetus to accomplish all they can before they perish, whereas everybody who has that invincible mentality tend to rest on their routines. Jennifer managed to write out four volumes of her thoughts in her last three months of life. That's more than I could do in fourteen years. I mean--my novel is only at 156 pages and I started that in 2004. If you stack those four volumes together it would measure at some two thousand pages. That's more words put together than everything I have ever written fiction-wise. Not only that, but she managed to read every single book on her must-read list. I'm not even an eighth of the way through.

I just don't see that happening if she didn't feel like her time was running out.

And I just don't see me reaching my potential without the notion that I've squandered the first thirty years of my life and that's it about time I utilize the next thirty. Live forever? That just sounds like a life spent in ennui, wandering from place to place because every place and every act has lost all significance. More than starvation, more than overcrowdedness, even more than rampant violence, I would hate to live in a world where nothing matters because everything becomes a zero-sum game. I want every choice I make to leave an impact. I want to know what I do will be remembered because I will only be on this Earth for a short time comparatively. I want to know I'm free to live my life as I choose... and not consigned to merely existing without the aid of a purpose or the context of meaning.

I want to be free to die, knowing I left my mark with the opportunity provided me.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Oh, Please Don't Drop Me Home, Because It's Not My Home, It's Their Home, And I'm Welcome No More

2011-07-06T23:59:00.001-07:00

--"There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (cover)", The Dum Dum Girls

More than a few years back I wrote a poem called "Arcady" about a couple visiting this pristine beach and having their first, best romantic encounter there. Then, many years after the woman of the piece has died, the man returns to the beach to find the beach a mere shadow of its former self. When I wrote the piece I hadn't experience the phenomenon myself. I thought it was a neat conceit that I had seen done before in other works of literature and wished to try my hand at it. I had never experienced that sense of loss. I had never gone through that questioning of my memory. The whole exercise was purely conjectural.

I'm a romantic idealist; that's been said before. Therefore, before I could have very easily seen myself experiencing the same range of emotions as the narrator of the piece given the circumstances. I would dearly miss a beloved place if it all fell to ruin just as I would miss a beloved person should they slowly succumb to illness.

----

This past weekend I went to Chicago for the second time in my life. I went with my friend Cara to see The Elected to play there. The last time I was in Chicago was in 2007. The last time I was in Chicago I was complicit in the act of adultery being committed. The last time I was in Chicago it completely felt like I was running away from real life and running towards a dream that I knew I would have to wake up from. The last time I was in Chicago I left practically in tears because there was an immense sadness that had filled in my heart.

It was also some of the best six days of my life.

Going back, I was let down from the get-go. There was no anticipation, no feeling of impending joy. What I felt instead was the sense that no experience was ever going to match that of the original journey. I mean--like the poem says, when you've already been to Paradise and been forced to leave, what really is the purpose of going back? What you had there will never be had again. What you felt there is something that's been locked away in your heart and going back isn't going to pull that feeling out. It was like walking through the pictures of a former dream devoid of all sense of motion and emotion. I just couldn't put myself into a place where I could see this trip as being something separate from the original trip.

I know that doesn't say a lot of my powers of separating memory from real life. But sometimes I think my memories are the world I really want to live in and real life just the time in-between my moments when I'm back there again. Chicago this past weekend is not the Chicago I want to remember. It was just a postcard sent from the real thing.

No, the real Chicago will always be the one where I was happy four years ago and that's the place I long to go back to someday.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Even In Dreams I Could Not Betray You

2011-06-30T03:41:00.000-07:00

--"Even In Dreams", The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

"Surely you must be joshing, sugar. I was the greatest cashier to have ever lived," you managed to say between sips of your sweet tea. "Speed, accuracy, winning smile--I had it all."

You watched your companion, with retaliation on his mind, shake his head vigorously. He had brought up the subject only minutes earlier of how much he had loved his previous job at the bookstore and how he was widely recognized as the best cashier to have ever taken to the floor. You had taken in his devilish grin in stride, watching him bask in the light of his former glory. With his every word you had noticed how much fondness his memories of that job held. You let him finish his stories, let him have his say.

Then you stole his thunder.

"I may not have worked in the paradise of Crown Books, but I'm telling you that Jean & Hall was a good place to work as well. It was fun."

"But come on, Breanne, how many customers could you have gotten in a day?" you heard him ask.

"You'd be surprised. You would be surprised. Hell's bells, there were some days around the holidays where it seemed like the customers were multiplying like gremlins."

"What with all the water around the flowers and plants."

You both laughed sheepishly. You were both having lunch in the middle of Geno's East. Although the place was normally busy, you were both there in the middle of the week just after the lunch rush had ended. The dinner rush wasn't going to get rolling for another few hours. You two had the dining room almost all to yourself. Any laughter above a whisper would have called attention to yourselves even more than the sight of two people obviously not dressed for Chicago weather already had. There you were, in a red sundress on the windiest of July days, hair rent all asunder, and there he was, dressed in t-shirt and jeans that screamed out-of-towner. You both had noticed early on how everyone was dressed more upscale, more refined in Chicago. Only the vacationers were treading lightly in their pastels and khakis and what have you. As your daddy would have said, the two of you were like two hounds running in a wolf pack.

Yet all of that seemed to matter very little to the both of you. You were having fun and, hell's bells, you were on vacation. You didn't have to answer to anyone's perception of y'all. What they thought of you and yours was their business. All that mattered to you was that, so far, you were having a good time. The pizza there was amazing--as was the food everywhere else you had gone--and lunch was turning out to be yet another great memory to add to the list of great memories you had been making since you both had arrived in town. Patrick was being quite charming. From arranging to take you dancing on one of the first nights you were in town to acquiescing to every request you made so far, he was laying on thick the fact this trip was an attempt to shore up the connection you two had shared for over half of your life. The city was amazing. And, for the first time in a long time, you were beginning to forget what life as married Breanne was like. You were remembering what life was like as young, vibrant Breanne instead. You were starting to remember how bright the whole world used to seem, especially when you didn't have to be at the beck and call of somebody else's whims.

"At any rate they always stuck me on register because that was my strong point. I could upsell a customer before he even knew what was hitting them."

"You want to talk about upselling, Breannie? I not only used to talk people into certain books. I used to talk people into falling in love with authors. I was selling people on entire serieses--is that even a word?"

"I understood you."

"Well, that was me. I think I was just born to recommend crap to people, specifically crap that I enjoyed and that I felt people should enjoy right along with me. Flowers can't compete with that. Nothing can."

"You'd be surprised at how much joy a simple bouquet can bring to someone."

"As much as a good book?"

"Different kind of joy. I ain't saying books don't have a place in people's lives, but there's something to be said about coming home and seeing something as simply breathtaking as fresh cut flowers arranged in the most pleasant fashion. I believe there's such things as food for the soul and seeing something that uplifts your spirit is like feasting on nature itself."

"Well, when you put it that way, I can see that."

"I knew you could see things my way, Eeyore," you said while taking another sip of your sweet tea.

"But I was still a better register jockey than you," you heard him say as a parting shot before shoveling another bite of sausage pizza into his mouth.

The rest of the afternoon was still up in the air. The two of you hadn't really planned daily activities for the trip. Naturally, you wanted to partake of some of the better museums in the country while you were here. He wanted to catch a game at both Wrigley and Cellular Field. And, of course, you both wanted to sample as many restaurants as possible with the short time you'd been given. However, if he wanted to wile away the rest of afternoon sitting there and talking, that would have been more than okay with you. You didn't have anywhere specific to be. You didn't have any plans. You didn't have anyone else to meet. The focus of the day was reconnecting with an old friend, as was the focus of the entire trip.

Just then you caught him looking your way in that certain way he has when he wants to ask you something but isn't sure of your response. It didn't make a difference that you two had just been talking about bookstore and florists; his mind tended to wander like an orphan cat with the afternoon off. Whereas you tended to hone in on one subject and could whittle away at it for the whole day, his mind tended to flit from one subject to the next--funny to serious and back again. Right then you could tell you were in store for something more serious in nature, probably about the state of the two of you.

"I had a dream about you, Breanne."

Uh oh.

"When? Last night?"

"No, the other week. Before we flew out here."

You felt him reach for your hand atop the table. You readily grabbed it without thinking. The routine had already been established. He didn't just say things to you; he made announcements. That was one thing you'd always admired about the boy. He spoke his mind, damn the consequences. It mattered little that this had the effect of making him seem like a drama queen, spouting his thoughts as if every situation was dire. All that mattered was that he was earnest in his proclamations. When he told you that you were funny, you felt like you could make the world laugh. When he told you that he was sad, you hadn't heard of anyone else who had faced such sadness. And when he told you that he loved you, you felt like you didn't deserve such affection. So what if he was prone to melodramatic gestures and posturing? It was a small price to pay to find someone who told the truth in all its ugliness and in all its beauty.

You felt his hand in yours, felt the longing in his touch. You were almost silently whispering him to continue his thought.

"What were you dreaming about?" you asked.

"I was dreaming about us coming here, which was strange because I had no idea what Chicago looked like until we got here. It was my idea of Chicago at the time anyway. We were in the city, visiting various places hand in hand, when you stopped in the middle of the street. You let go right before a red VW rabbit crashed into you."

"I died? Well, that's no fun."

"But that's the thing you didn't die. You just got up and walked in the opposite direction. I tried to chase you, but you ran away from me. I don't know--I must've chased you for fourteen blocks but I could never quite reach you. At one point I think I was chasing you along the canals of Venice and at another point the city started looking like Everwood or something--mountains in the background and everything. But even there I couldn't catch you. I ran until I was exhausted.

"But when I stopped, you stopped too--always out of reach, but always in sight. It was very frustrating. I would call to you. Sometimes you would answer, but other times you just wouldn't hear me. Then when I'd run after you again you would start to jog again."

You half-expected him to ask you what the dream meant. That's what most people did in this situation. Yet he never got around to that part. His aim was clear. This was not a tale that needed deciphering. This was more an airing of grievances. It didn't matter that the grievance was imaginary. What mattered most was the feeling of helplessness, of abandonment, that it elicited. If anything, it sounded like he was waiting for you to apologize.

For a long time before that day that seemed to be the ebb-and-flow of your friendship with Patrick. You would do something ill-advised and he would grow irritated. You'd apologize, tell him that was who you were, that you could only be yourself--no more, no less. And the two of you would make up. You would be good for a few weeks until the process would start over again. Or sometimes he would say something intentionally cruel, designed to puncture your precarious notion your life was perfect as is, and it would be he who would have to rectify the situation. He would write a grandiose letter explaining his unfettered regret. Amends would be made. Then the two of you would be as thick as thieves again.

But then there came one day just after college when the pattern changed. You made a choice that seemingly there was no coming back from.

"Awww, Patrick. That sounds like a horrible dream."

"It was a terrifying dream actually."

'cuz there's nobody like you

You watched his eyes alight upon yours. For the longest time the two of you stared at one another over the table. You could tell he wanted to say it, he wanted to tell you to come back to him. You could tell he wanted to extend this getaway from real life to the rest of your lives rather than the week you had both agreed to set aside for one another. You could tell he was going to break the promised that this was merely going to be a short respite from what had to be. This was going to be the exception to the rule. But the rule of what? The rule of what was proper? The rule of what was acceptable? Perhaps he wanted to tell you that he'd been feeling everything you had been feeling for the last three days, that you were having too much fun with him, here, to ever want to go back home.

He was probably watching your eyes for some sign of complicit agreement. As much as you could read his face like words on a page, he could read yours just as easily. It wouldn't take him long to scan for the smallest weak point in the wall of joviality you were trying to erect. You'd both agreed that this was going to be something casual. You'd both made a point to reiterate that this was going to be a one-time thing. It wasn't fair that his resolve was weakening and yours wasn't. That didn't mean he had to undermine your confidence as well. There was agreements in place. There was a long-standing understanding that the two of you could meet here, have your fun, but that you both weren't allowed to go home with one another. Everything had to go back to the way it was for this week in Chicago to work for what it was intended.

He wanted to ask you if everything you left behind was worth going back to. And if he did ask you, in those certain words, you really didn't have a rehearsed answer to tell him.

Before he could phrase the question that might shatter both your lives, you interrupted him.

"The other good thing about flowers is that you can admire them from afar just as well as you can admire them up close. I can stand in my yard and see my neighbor's garden. Even from there I can admire how bright and cheery his orchids or roses or tulips are. I don't need to be in the same yard. I don't need to own the flowers to appreciate them all the same. I can feel the same pang of joy even from there."

You watched him pause and smile. He shook his head slightly before slowly letting go of your hand.

"And the nice thing about books is that you can still enjoy them even if you hadn't read them for a long time. Once you come back to the story you know you'll find all the familiar smiles and laughs... and even tears waiting for you. Those stories, those great, enduring stories never change. They just get more cherished every time you get a chance to read them."

You smiled back at him, sighing to yourself the relief you were straining to contain. You had come close to breaking something good that could never be fixed again. You had peered at that edge and managed to slowly back away from it. All that was left was getting back to the hotel room to use what little time you had left to show him that all was not lost. You still had time to reminisce about everything you ever were to one another, to go back for one week to the way things used to be and could have been had certain pages not been turned when they had, had certain seeds not been planted where they had. You still had time to be something more of the kids who had imagined growing old together in each other's arms.

But before you could leave the restaurant you just had to say one more thing to him.

"Silly, Eeyore. You should know by now that if ever seem to be running away from you that eventually I'm going to come running right back to you. Even in a dream I can't ever quite leave you behind...."

Breanne

This Is A Happy End, Cause You Don't Understand, Everything You Have Done, Why's Everything So Wrong

2011-06-28T05:07:00.000-07:00

--"New Soul", Yael Naim

Maybe the world doesn't end with a bang. Maybe the world doesn't end at all. Instead of death I'd prefer if my life ended in stillness--if I could go to sleep one day and the world froze in its place for eternity. That's a concept I can back. Rather than the hellfire or the silver clouds I would prefer the constant state of neutrality. Neither overjoyed or suffering, resting in the arms of something in the middle is where I'd like to be.

It isn't because I fear death or because I despise life. I've simply come to a point in my existence where I'm realizing that where we end up shouldn't be a topic of contemplation. We all end up where we end up, and while I believe in God and Heaven and all that, I'm tired of trying to live up to a standard that nobody can be entirely sure of. And it's not because I especially espouse hedonism or minimalism, or any specific brand of philosophy. What I believe in is what makes me smile and what I can do to make others smile. All the rest is folly. That's why I'm taking it upon myself to forgo from this point forward any grandiose central statement that sums up what I believe in a few words. Don't postpone joy--that's less a philosophy than a mission statement. It's not what I believe; it's my occupation. From this point on I'll focus my strength on living through as much as I can than what I can accomplish before I die.

I don't want the happy ending. I don't want the sad ending. I just want a good story throughout. I want to take my cue from music or poetry that doesn't so much end with a complete thought, but rather a hypothetical upon occasion. Or maybe I want to take my cue from nature. A forest doesn't tell a story. Therefore, it has no ending. An ocean doesn't follow a discernible narrative structure. It just is.

Gosh. I just want to be.

I don't want to be tied to convention. I don't want to follow the plan. I don't want to have a plan. I want to live life like one of my poems. It's as simple as that. I want to stop and start. I want to abandon words altogether if the thought feels incomplete. I want direction to be an afterthought and emotion to be the prime motivation for everything. I want to feel, to feel, to feel, rather than live, breathe, think, or grow. I want to be timeless and still. I want to be nothing but nothing, rather than feel pressure to be someone or somebody's someone. I want to care about everything you're not supposed to care about and nothing about the things you are. I want to lose my sense of progress. I want to lose my sense of failure. I want to lose hope and regret and comparing where I was to where I am to where I will be.

To be still forever, that's how I want it all to end.

dw

I Realize Why, I Cannot Fly, Said The Bird With A Broken Wing. Though My Lift Is Gone, My Voice Is Strong, And I Can Still Sing

2011-06-15T00:37:00.000-07:00

--"Clouds Parting (8:14 a.m.)", The Elected

Earlier this evening I had to to dispose of a dead bird from outside my balcony door. Apparently it had flown into the glass door sometime while I was at work. However, I didn't notice the body until I had retired to my bedroom. The whole process was very unpleasant for me. I was very tempted to leave the body outside till tomorrow when I was more in the mood to deal with the implications and expend the effort. In the end, I grabbed a plastic cup, scooped up the body, and threw it in the trash can near the elevator.

I just don't handle death well. I'm not exactly afraid of it, but I know myself to be someone who can't overly emote on the subject on a whim. For death to really affect me I have to know the person who died very well and, frankly, I have to like the person who died very well. For those two specific reasons there just hasn't been too many people whose passing has stirred in me the desire to ruminate on the subject for very long. In fact, there's only been Jennifer. For her I even went so far as to write a eulogy. But folks like my grandfathers, my grandmother, and my various aunts and uncles I neither knew them all that much and definitely didn't care about them all that much to want to be subjected to the sight of their fading away and their ultimate passing.

I'm just not the kind of person who needs to be present at scenes that are upsetting to me. I already have on my plate to be sad and mournful about; I never want to add death to that mix. I just can't ever get behind the idea of fixating on somebody's end for hours at a time, especially when it's somebody I really didn't spend hours at time with in the first place.

Maybe if it were parents, my brother, or my cousina I could see the point in spending an appropriate amount of time focusing on how much their loss would affect me.

Or if I lost another close friend like Toby.

Or, heaven forbid, Breanne.

Till then I don't need the annoyance of taking time out of my day to acknowledge the passage of a life. And I certainly don't need the hassle of having to do my part in laying to rest their corpses. A bird is bad enough, but I just don't get the point of attending funerals for everybody I may have met once in my life. From now on I'm not going to any funerals for anybody I don't already genuinely love.

That way if I do show up at someone's memorial you know it's because I had general affection for the person and not just out of a sense of obligation.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

The Picture You See Is No Portrait Of Me, It's Too Real To Be Shown To Someone I Don't Know

2011-06-14T01:58:00.001-07:00

--"Round and Round", New Order

It occurred to me while I was out with Kerri Ray this past weekend that there's a reason I like Impressionist paintings (especially Monet). It happened when I caught myself fudging the answer to yet another personal question. I like to think of myself as an open book. I like to think that there's nothing I'm not willing to admit to even strangers. That's why I write this blog; to prove that there isn't any big, dark secrets I'm keeping from those I care about. However, when Kerri Ray's queries seem to burrow into some pretty dark recesses of my memory I couldn't help but obscure the complete answer as best I could. I didn't want to and it wasn't like the answers were particularly terrifying. If anything my hazy responses were the direct result of a desire to position myself in the best possible light.

I mean--I like Kerri Ray. But, aside from people like Carly or Ilessa, I don't think there's one person I see less often than her. And that presents problems when I'm attempting forge a connection. With most people, if I think they're going to stick around for awhile I have no problem divulging the truth. I figure it's going to come out anyway since I have never been good at hiding the fundamentals of my nature nor the certain habits that I've owned all my life. It's like the fact I can't smell. I usually tell that tidbit up-front to anybody I believe has a chance of knowing me for more than a few hours because that's a fact I can't hide. However, when it comes to people I see occasionally I stop seeing the point in going down the checklist of all my faults and weaknesses. I start to smudge out the delicate lines that delineate my personality. Instead, I subconsciously try to position myself as being the possible version of me. I try to give the best impression of me.

So, after watching Super 8, with its many reflections on the nature of reputation and redemption, when Kerri Ray asked me if there was anything in my life I thought I could never be forgiven for I lied and said that there wasn't. She knows some of the bad stuff. She knows about the burning of Jina's stuff. She knows about the fights with DeAnn. She knows about the pushing incident with Breanne. My temper isn't exactly something I can hide when I'm recounting anecdotes about how I used to be. But those I really have no shame about since it isn't me now. It's not like I go around hitting women or threatening to crash my car.

No, it was a lie because there are things I regret that most people don't know. For instance, I don't think I've ever said this allowed or written it down, but I really regret putting DeAnn and Breanne through the whole pregnancy scares. At the time I made light of it because all I could focus on was the relief, but a large part of me now realizes I took the whole situation callously and rather lightly. I should have been more mature. I should have been more involved.

And I regret being so cavalier about the friends I pushed away or let go of impulsively. I know I have a tendency to freak out over the tiniest things and convert them into excuses to sever ties with people. But the only reason I do that is out of a fear my friends will eventually outgrow me. It's my way of doing unto them what I feel they'll inevitably do to me. All my life I've been surrounded with people I was either jealous of, envious of, or just plain in awe of. Part of the attraction to the friends I have now is their capability to amaze me with their talents or just their life story. In comparison, I feel rather dull and uninteresting. And there always comes a point where my inferiority complex sets off alarms that I'm about to be ditched for far more interesting individuals. That's most of the reason why I let Jina go after she was a sophomore in high school, because she was too intelligent for me and I had the skulking suspicion that she was only going to get more intelligent and more cultured than I ever could. I didn't want to be the person she had to dumb down her conversations for. It was the same with Peter and Dan. I noticed there was a trend of them exploring new and varied pursuits, like snowboard, strip clubs, and traveling abroad, when I'm pretty much still content with the pursuits that amused me in high school--going to baseball games, playing board games, and watching movies. I'm rather intractable when it comes to finding new hobbies or discovering new interests. With those two I just felt like what I wanted to do was forever going to be brushed aside since the hobbies that bonded us together were no longer the hobbies they enjoyed.

And I regret being so timid in my approach to life, and especially romance. So much of my story I feel revolves around the chances I never took or sometimes took too late. I wish I could go back and change some of those opportunities. I like to think of myself as somebody impulsive. I mean--I take trips on a whim. In fact, I'm going to Chicago with my friend Cara come July 1st since I wanted to see The Elected play somewhere other than California. I'm still willing to drive out to a friend's house at 2 a.m. whenever they call. But when it comes to the big things--love, my career, my finding my bliss--I'm still as timid as a doe. No one should be as afraid of finding happiness as I seem to be.

I consider Kerri Ray a friend. It's not like I'd lie to her face. The days of me spreading untruths just for sport are long behind me. But when it comes down to it I know there are times where I intentionally give obtuse answers when it would be very easy to give a detailed one. I know there are certain people I'd rather not get into all the reasons why I'm fucked up with. Kerri Ray still thinks of me as somebody relatively smart, relatively funny, and relatively lively because that's the persona I try to tailor myself to when I'm around her. It's very easy for me to sublimate my more dour thoughts and curtail my more melancholy expressions for the couple of hours we catch up with each other. That ability, coupled with the knowledge that there's a good chance I won't see her again for a year or two, makes me feel like it's not worth wrecking her perception of me in order to forge something deeper and more substantial. What's the point of doing all the work of building a bridge if it's going to be eighteen months between crossings? There isn't a point.

I don't classify myself as a hard person to figure out. All my likes and dislikes are pretty much well-known. What I think keep guarded are the motivations for my actions and my reactions to these selfsame actions. Stories and incidents I have no problem relating to people I hardly know. After all, they're just choices I made a long time ago and the results of these choices. But my philosophy of life, especially my life, is what I tend to keep for myself and a select few. How I view the world and my place in it is something I feel is very precious. Once I give my opinion about a subject, especially a subject as important as life or love, it's out there and I can't take it back. People can see what I do or what I look like however they want. I have no modesty when it comes to personal history.

But how I feel about things? That's what truly matters to me and that's what I tend to guard rather closely when it comes to new people in my life. And like Monet or Sisley, I tend to present a representation of my true feelings rather than the actual feelings when I'm talking to somebody new in my life. It's just easier to have them see a version of me they like rather than the "real" me which, even I have to admit, goes either way for most people.

I'm not the person Kerri Ray thinks I am... but neither am I the person I tend to think of myself as. The truth, cryptically, lies somewhere in the middle.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

'Cause I Wanted To Fly, So You Gave Me Your Wings, And Time Held Its Breath So I Could See, Yeah, And You Set Me Free

2011-06-08T04:13:00.000-07:00

--"You Set Me Free", Michelle Branch

I shall be having a very special houseguest at the end of July. For a long spell now I've been angling to get my favorite Kentucky gal pal down here. With summer upon us she finally found the time for little 'ole me and will now be gracing my presence with her indomitable spirit and dazzling intellect. Never you mind the fact it's been awhile since I had some proper company around these parts aside from my husband and the usual suspects; it'll just be nice to have someone to impress again.

When Toby comes I can recite all my favorite stories about this town where I grew up, about the times I had when I was only so high, about what it was like to be me, only at a younger age. That's the thing about getting older being surrounded by the same people--they've heard all your stories, they know what everything means to you, they can almost gauge your reaction before you have it in any situation. On one hand it's nice having folks who know you so well. On the other hand, like my daddy says, "you can only hear the same sermon so many times before you have folks sleeping in the pews." I like my tales, you know? But do you know what I like even better? I like having someone to tell them to who hasn't heard them before. I like showing my town off to people who've never been there before. I like having people stay in my house who I've never had as guests before.

And, hell's bells, I'm telling y'all right now, I will be spoiling that gal silly when she's down here. She's the closest I have to a niece or nephew, and I intend to ruin her for "real" family. haha

She and I have spent a considerable amount of time discussing what it's like to grow up in a larger family, what it's like to be the youngest in a family. Being an only child I only know what it's like to have all the attention focused on me. Her stories about how her parents were almost too lax with her guidance-wise never cease to intrigue me. She never really had to fight to gain her independence. She was allowed more liberties at a younger age than I ever was. Conversely, she and I have had a few conversations about what it's like to be the star of your family--not just my immediate family--but the whole extended circle of kin that I possess as well. She's never been anyone's miracle baby. She's never been the one to grab hold of the spotlight, to have so many others place that much scrutiny upon her. As she said, she's more used to introspection and not extrospection. The burden she's placed on her shoulders have always been more than the burden others have laid upon her.

All my life I've tried to live up to a standard have set for me. Being successful, being intelligent, being well-mannered and cultured--those have always been qualities I had drilled in me. Dancing, writing, maybe running--those were the only hobbies I had which I felt were only for me. But I never really minded the push to impress people. It's only when the quest became obsessive that I felt the desire to push myself away from the grind. Over the years I've had so many mentors when it came to people whose talents and experience I admired that it truly seemed I was being passed from one to the next, culminating in the fully-rounded gal who sits here now.

That's the other reason I wanted to bring the youngest of the SFoM members down to these parts. I reckon it's about time I start being that mentor for somebody else. Who knows if I'll ever be a mother, you know? Maybe the closest I'll get to that bliss is passing on the wealth of my experience and the lifetime of hard-learned lessons onto other gals in search of some answers. I'm not claiming to have all the answers, but I've compiled a few truths in my day. I'm kind of relishing the opportunity to preserving my knowledge with individuals who can fully appreciate them. Miss Frisson is a good kid. The last thing I reckon she needs is somebody telling her what to think or what to do. It's my belief, though, that like any good auntie, there are things you can teach without preaching to someone. I think there's a lot more to preparing a person for life than can be explained in a classroom or church setting.

Most of all, though, I'm anticipating having a hoot-and-a-half with somebody I consider among my closest friends. If some knowledge gets spilled in the process, well, then so be it.

Breanne

I Feel Too Young, I Can't Lie On My Bed Without Thinking I Was Wrong, But When This Feeling Calls This World Becomes Another

2011-05-23T00:06:00.000-07:00

--"Too Young", Phoenix

It's not secret that I was an admirer of Garden State when it came out. I felt I could relate to the issues brought up in the story seeing as the characters were about the same age as me at the time. I also went on in length how I thought Natalie Portman's character was the end-all be-all of greatest film girlfriends. To me, at the time, it was the perfect movie and one I believed I would hold in high esteem for a long time coming.

Lost in translation (ha) from then till now is how other movies I saw during the same approximate period I thought were good, but weren't going be pieces I would consider watching over and over again. In simpler terms, I thought Garden State would become one of my all-time classics and the rest of them would fade into obscurity. Included among these other films was a little film called Lost in Translation. At the time I thought it was good, but not great. I thought it was entertaining, dramatic at points, but ultimately something I didn't believe I could endure watching time and time again. The characters felt too distant from what I was going through. Yes, I felt isolated and lonely like them--but their sense of the feeling and how they handled it seemed miles away from my experience. The whole story just felt like it could never happen to me in that fashion. That's why I wrote it off. That's why I didn't think I'd be talking about eight years later.

I was watching Lost in Translation yesterday--well, a piece of it. It was probably the twentieth time I've seen it since that first time I saw it in the theaters. I'm here to admit that it still holds up. I still feel just as moved as I did that first time. Meanwhile, I can't even remember the last time I wanted to see Garden State. It's not that I believe it suddenly transformed into a bad movie. It's merely that all the problems that I thought I could relate to in that film seem beneath me, behind me. They all seem like concerns that I had in my twenties, my post-college days. Now it's like those kinds of questions never creep into my head, whereas the sense of being adrift in a sea of people like Bob and Charlotte never quite goes away and never is a problem anyone else has ever come up with a lasting solution to. I'm afraid to admit it, but I identify more with the sense of being held in place by life than life dealing you a bum hand. For me it's a much worse fate to be stuck in the middle than have your life seem to be all bad luck.

Maybe it's a sign I'm getting older, that bad news would almost seem preferable to no news. But I'm thinking why I seem so hung-up on Lost in Translation and not Garden State is that you can't always predict who or what can fill your heart. The people and experiences you hope will complete you are often the ones that fall considerably short. Meanwhile, the people and experience you never meant to let in, the ones you were sure weren't built to last often surprise you.

That's kind of like the movie too. Life isn't about planning who you're going to find comfort in, it's about finding comfort in the person you just happen to stumble upon. You can't predict human kindness, you can't plot emotional connections. It's kind of like Toby always says. Don't postpone joy. If you find it or if it finds you, just run with it. Don't hold out for something better. Take comfort in who or what you can when you can.

Because sometimes it's the movie you liked, but didn't love, at first can turn out to be the one that stays with you for your whole life. And sometimes the person you found annoying and clingy can turn out to be someone you still find annoying and clingy (but in a good way) some eighteen years later.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Ooh, I Lost My Sense Of Passion And Direction, To Protect Myself From Hurting And Despair, Listen To My Heart, My Soul Is Aching

2011-05-19T00:34:00.000-07:00

--"Heart of Stone", Erasure

There comes that moment where your heart is all aflutter and you convince yourself that the person you're sitting next to could be the one. At least that's the way it is with me. I exchange words, trade meaningful glances, and hope that my best is good enough to convince the person looking back at me that I'm worth keeping in their life. And when the night ends I'm left with the idea that I've done the impossible, that I've managed to secure a foothold in their life.

I'm a romantic idealist. It's in my nature to believe that a universal truth like love does exist, that it is attainable. That's why whenever the spark of hope is seen I almost always immediately try fanning it into the flames of passion. I'm complicit in my own bid for failure. I raise the stakes when the game at hand, at first, is friendly. I invest meaning into every moment, lacing every word and every gesture with hidden depths and subtle nuances that probably were never there in the first place. Every time her arm brushes against mine, every couple of seconds her eyes spend looking into mine, I take as a sign that the road I'm taking is headed in the right direction. I believe because I want to believe and not because there's actually something there to believe in. I take solace in her smile because I can imagine myself seeing that smile every morning for the rest of my life.

Yet eventually I know what comes next. I expect the cold wind that blows the clouds over my sunshine. I start analyzing all the same telltale signs of true love's embrace. But now I start to divest the meaning from the motion. I willingly remove the veil of magic and mystery from the situation. I don't want to get my hopes up. I don't want to set myself up for that fall. The touches suddenly become accidental. The words suddenly are just words without an inch of subtext. The looks aren't aimed at me, but through me or around me. I'm just the person she's standing next to and not the person she's there with.

About the only quality that doesn't change is my view of her. I know she's worth all the extra analysis. I know she's worth it. The way she can fill me with such hope and such dread allows me such certainty. With most I'm used to not making an impression. That's pretty much standard fare for me. But with her I want to say some part of her will remember me. I want to say that five years from now, ten years from now introductions I won't have to be made again. She'll know my face, the way my eyes will still gently lay upon her, and my name will instantly spring to her lips. We may not end up tethered in this life or the next, but I'm confident there was a connection made that wasn't just ephemeral. More importantly, I know she made an impression on me, which, these days, is even more rare of occurrence. For a small part of my life I allowed some new light in through the shutters.

That's what I was thinking on my drive. I think I even set a record on how fast I went from the first part to the second part. I don't know if that's a sign of maturity or a sign of surrender.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Take Me Out Tonight, Because I Want To See People, And I Want To See Life

2011-05-16T01:38:00.000-07:00

--"There Is a Light That Never Goes Out (cover)", The Ocean Blue

Dear Emily,

You can't regret the way a relationship ended nor wish things had gone differently. I've found that relationships are what they are, from start to finish. The only thing you can do is accept them for everything they meant to you, good or bad, and try to learn from them so the next one goes a little bit smoother. I know you were trying to help him, but sometimes I think people do themselves a disservice when they resume contact with their exes too soon. You know me, I'm a huge believer in maintaining some distance with somebody you've broken up with recently to evaluate where the two of you stand and where the two of you can go from there. For some of us, like you, the need to mother somebody overrides the basic idea that the two of you didn't work out for a reason. That reason doesn't disappear simply because you feel needed.

Sometimes you can't pull out of the spiral until it's too late and no amount of assistance is going to change the point when you pull yourself out. I think he's just that kind of person who'll accept help even if, in the end, that help doesn't really change anything for him. The only way to get yourself out of funk is, like it or not, to physically crawl your way out of it. You can't be dragged, you can't be pushed, and you certainly can't have your hand held while somebody gently dries you off. It isn't a cake walk leading a happy life. It isn't supposed to be easy getting some or all of what you want. You're going to fall. The best thing you can do is not drag somebody down with you... or, in some people's case, is not to let other people drag you down with them.

The sad thing is I know exactly what you mean about all you want is someone to curl up next to and tell them how your day want. That's what I want too. I've never been the type to sleep with dozens of women. I've only slept with four girls... and two of those were only once or twice. The other two were people I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life. That's what made those times special. Frankly, I always thought the part afterwards, the part where the two of you are all sweaty from making love and just fall asleep in each other's embrace was the better part of the night. There's a comfort there that just barely edges out the excitement and earth-shattering passion of sex. Give me a night of just getting lost in another person's quiet caress as you rest next to each other over a whole night of unbridled fucking any time.

I want the meatloaf and potatoes too. I want the girl next door as opposed to the girl from the clubs or the bars. I want the suburban mom over the big city fashionista. I want the quiet, simple life over the stress of a high maintenance existence. I want to be in my routine already and not struggling to figure out what comes next.

I guess I'm lucky in that regard compared to you. I may have lost my one best chance at finding that perfect wife, but I never did lose my best friend. I made sure that even when she got married we didn't drift apart. I made sure that I didn't let my feelings of being hurt and abandoned by her cloud my judgment in what a truly good thing I have with her. And, for her part, she didn't let her stupid husband dictate to her who she can and cannot still be friends with. There isn't a day I don't miss what I once had with her, how intimate and romantic and just darling we used to be with one another. But that's just the ex-boyfriend talking. The part that's still her best friend hasn't gone more than eight months without her company and doesn't plan on fucking that any time soon.

I know what it's like to lose her already. There is nothing--no fight, no difference of opinion, no request--too big to lose sight of what losing her forever would mean. And, frankly, I'm too much of a coward to find out. There's a lot of people who've told me that it's unhealthy to put so much stock into one person. That it's unhealthy to treat her like she's my best friend and my little sister wrapped up into one... but that's exactly like she feels to me, like she's both my one true friend and family at the same time. There's people that have told her that it's unhealthy to keep in touch with me as much as she does, given our history and given she's nine years into her marriage almost. I don't know--we just make it work--because we made a promise to make it work and we both put in the extra effort to see that it does.

Yeah, that brings its own set of problems. For instance, I don't know if I'll ever be able to really fall in love with someone again. I mean--I dated DeAnn for three years and lived with her for one. I kept running into the problem that whatever was lacking in our relationship I could always find in Breanne. I kept running into the concern that on the days when putting up with the gal I was with was too difficult I always had a place to run to with the gal I used to be. Maybe that's not a good thing, to have an easy, dependable way out of dealing with problems that truly needed dealing with. BUt that's my life. She's my crutch. And even if for some reason I could ever want to walk on my own, it's gotten to the point where I think I've forgotten how. It's gotten to the point where I think I would cease to function properly if I didn't know I could call her if I was in trouble or lonely or just feeling out of it on any particular given day. It's gotten to the point where I don't actively look to date people because I get a lot of the comforting and care I need from a gal who lives thousands of miles away from me. And perhaps it's not all I want or deserve... but it's enough for me to live on. She's like my bread and water, when I know there could be real food and drink out there somewhere but I'm just too scared to spend all the days it would take to search for it.

And I know what you mean about Taylor. Jennifer was my Taylor. I didn't know her as long as you knew Taylor, but she made an impact on my life in the brief time that I knew her. She was just good. Not just a good person. She was like goodness personified. I never had a bad day with her. I never had a huge fight with her that I can remember. I never saw myself being annoyed she was my friend even for a second.

I lose friends so quickly. Technically, I give up on friends so quickly. It doesn't take much for me to give them up when they do the littlest thing to annoy me. I stopped being friends with everyone in my elementary school after I went to high school even though they all lived in the same town as me because I didn't want to make the effort to stay in touch with them. I lost my high school friends because I refused to adapt to the way they had grown up. To me their mature interests was not what I had signed up for and I felt like they never wanted to do anything I liked. They wanted to go snowboarding, when all I ever wanted to do was stay at home and play games like we used to. They wanted to go to strip clubs, and I just wanted to go find some place to eat and talk over dinner. They wanted to be different people and I just wanted to be the same person I was and always have been. They just made me feel stupid for staying the same or for having simpler tastes or for liking quieter, more subdued hobbies. But there were others I quit out on for stupid reasons. I quit on Heidi because she wrote bad letters (true story). I quit on Ilessa, for a time, because she moved away from me. I don't know--I've always taken it hard when people move away from me. If you've always lived far from me, that's fine. But if you're a nearby friend, well, then you should stay a nearby friend. I don't know how to make the conversion from one to the other. On the other hand, I would have loved to have one of my faraway friends like B. or Toby just move somewhere close to me. Just once I want to see somebody I'm friends with move to California.

And, I know when a girl's been crying because I always seem to be the person girls come to when they're feeling hurt or alone or scared. I never joke when it comes to a girl crying. I don't have that mechanism where I deflect the tension with humor. When I see a girl crying I want to know what's wrong. I want to know what I can do to help. I want to know how to make it better as soon as possible. I wasn't raised that way. I wasn't taught that. It's just a peculiarity of mine that a girl is downright beautiful when she's crying... and yet I hate to see beautiful things hurt.

there is a light that never goes out

I hope you find happiness soon, Slicks. You do deserve it. We all deserve it. We're all good people and, you're right, good things should happen to good people. I think what it is is it's a simple fact that we all have to go through the rough times before we're ready for the better times. We have to go through the heartache and the loneliness and the yelling, before we know how to smile again. Sometimes we have to experience colder weather to appreciate the sunshine as much as we should.

Hold in there, the sun will come out tomorrow, Slicks. I promise.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Everyone Showed You Where To Turn, Told You When To Runaway, Nobody Told You Where To Hide, Nobody Told You What To Say

2011-05-13T22:59:00.000-07:00

--"Blurry", Puddle of Mudd

Horse

I have never ridden the horse
much like I have never drunk from
the dirty glass. Such bravery
I have never possessed in its entirety.
I have heard you can speak to him
in whispers; becalm him by
conversing in his tongue.
It's sensible since I am insisting
he bear my weight without sass
or inquiries. But it isn't presumption
that prevents my mounting his
dappled back immediately.
I believe I was given dominion over
the beasts of the earth and sky and waves.
It's the simple fear that the horse,
like the rider, doesn't know where
it belongs and the simple fear
that I could be carried away by him
indefinitely.

dw

----

I prefer plans. I prefer planning. When you leave too much to chance, then the chances can you spin you wily-nilly wherever they want. They do in my case, I can tell you that much. If I had my way I would schedule out my next ten years, day by day, rather than leave the majority of my time to something I can see. It's the same way with my obsessions. I'm not a huge proponent of fighting against an enemy I can't see. Dirt, destiny--they're expressions of the same enemy. The unknown. I'm not looking forward to the big nothing. People always tell me that the outcome isn't set in stone, that the future might be bright if I just roll the dice. But brightness isn't necessarily a good thing. Brightness can blind you. Brightness can kill you given the chance. Gosh. I'd much prefer some light to see my way by. I'd rather be able to walk along at my own pace than feel like I have to rush headlong into the breach. That's why I don't see myself pushing myself to the edges just because I can. I'm not courageous for courage's sake. Push me and I'll fight back. Chase me and I'll run. But there's no need to test my capabilities when my capabilities aren't being tested. I firmly believe. Accept what you have. Accept where you're going. The only time you should deviate is if it's unhealthy or unlikely you can be happy in your present position or at your current pace. There's nothing we can't survive. There's nowhere we can't thrive. But if you give up too quickly, if you turn your focus too swiftly to that of hoping and praying, there's no way of knowing how much your self-will can overcome. That's what I say, focus on the present and don't hitch your horse to a better future. Fight for your better present. Leaving the hoping to those truly without hope.

dw

I Wouldn't If I Were You, I Know What She Can Do, She's Deadly, Man, And She Could Really Rip Your World Apart

2011-05-10T04:28:00.000-07:00

--"Maneater", Hall & Oates

I love my cousin Katie like she was my own sister. I've felt like that for quite some time, ever since I came to the realization that the relation I thought would be there for me wasn't as loyal as she feigned to be. I've known her all my life. In that time I've come to learn a few things about her. For instance, I know how embarrassed she gets when she's put on the spot. I know how she still kisses your hand when she's especially grateful, the way they do in the movies. And I know--I just know--that Katie's always been upfront with me, "as open as a highway in the dead of night," and I've felt it's my duty to be as honest with her.

There was a time, though, where holding up to that duty wasn't exactly easy. A few years back she was completely smitten with a boy that seemed the perfect gentleman. He seemed to dote on her, say all the right things and did his best to be thoughtful of her every need. He palled around with all her friends. He was affectionate, kind, and funny when he was around her. And when he met with her kin (including me) he was especially charming. To the right kind of eyes he seemed the perfect gentleman. As things go in our family, it wasn't very long before talk of marriage had spread through the phone tree like wildfire. Most of it was prompted by Katie herself, but some of it was fanned by my mother, bless her little heart, as well as the other matriarchs of the extended family.

Most of us gals knew we wanted to get married young. Hell's bells, I got married right out of college so I suppose part of the blame can be laid at my feet as well. Katie was no different. It was a game she couldn't win. She felt the pressure to find that right person as soon as possible and, to be kind, it really did seem like she had found the tree that bore the golden fruit on her first foray into the woods.

The trouble was all was not it appeared to be with Katie's beau. The more he came to call on her while she was with her family, the more most of us saw through the chinks in his armor. He was presumptuous, taking liberties with our hospitality in ways most boys saw occasion to be more well-reserved. He would give his opinion on personal matters that he did not have the whole truth about to people as varied as Katie's dad, my cousins. Even my daddy was no stranger to getting an earful of his "honest opinion." It's one thing to chime in now and again to participate in the conversation, but Katie's beau would full-on dominate the proceedings as if he were the expert we all were in desperate need of. He was clingy with her to the point of distraction. There would be times where I would want to take my favorite cousin out for dinner or drinks, only to be rebuffed at the last minute with the weak excuse of him "needing" her right then. Granted, I expected most of her time to be spent in his company. That's to be expected with any relationship. I wasn't asking her to give up any more of her time than she was willing to give to me. But there came a point where his sudden need for her managed to coincide with my plans with her without fail. He started to look like the petulant boy who raises a fuss to keep all the attention on him at the exclusion of everyone else around him. Worst of all, he seemed to be settling her down in all the worst ways. She became more reserved, more timid, and more apologetic. Granted, Katie's always been shy and respectful. But she's also always had a fire that's common in the women of our extended brood.

The truth was the more she was around him the more that fire seemed to be less and less brightly.

We all came to the conclusion around the same time, all the cousins, all the aunts and uncles, everyone... except Katie and her parents. On the outside we all were hugs and smiles at the prospect of her settling down with a husband. On the inside, though, it seemed nothing but a mistake. She might have found her life with him content and pleasant, but I knew she was never going to be happy. She would never find the bliss of true love with a boy whose only thought was to keeping himself happy.

I know what it's like to get married earlier than you need to. While I wouldn't go so far as to say I married the wrong man, I could say now that if I had to do it over again I would have waited another few years to make sure. I wouldn't have allowed the idea of being married to outweigh the considerations that a successful marriage requires. I jumped in whole-hog, as I'm wont to do, because I'd been convinced that once you've found the right guy and he asks you that you don't keep him waiting. I didn't take as much time with the decision as I should have.

I didn't want to see Katie fall off the same horse.

The problem was how to tell somebody I loved deeply that she deserved better than what she buying into. There's no easy way to damn that river, even if you have the best intentions. Not one of us--not my folks, not my cousins, not my aunts or uncles--wanted to be the person who threw the first stone. We all knew whoever made the first move to straightening her out would receive the lion's share of the scrutiny. It wouldn't matter that the rest of us agreed. It wouldn't even matter if she eventually came around to our line of thinking. Whoever said the first word would be branded as the instigator of her heartache and loneliness. That was one title I didn't want to be bestowed on me. I liked my cousin. More importantly, she liked me, you know? I wanted to insure that things stayed that way for as long as possible.

Yet in time I began to see that the only gal who could deliver the blow was little 'ole me. No one else was close enough or understood the situation for all its particulars like I did. If someone was to be the scapegoat I had the requisite stubbornness to pull off the transformation convincingly. That's what I did. I took her to lunch one day. There, I told her in no uncertain terms that I didn't like her boyfriend and that the rest of the family didn't approve as well. I told her, "sugar, I'm not telling you what to do, mostly because I know how well that works on me. I'm only saying you should consider the facts that so many of your kin disapprove. We all can't be wrong, you know?" She was stunned. To her it seemed like my proclamation was a complete turnaround from my previous position on the matter. I had turned my back on her and her happiness, which couldn't have been farther from the truth. If anything, it was entirely her happiness I was considering. It took her a few moments to compose herself. When she did she kindly thanked me for my opinion and then walked out of the restaurant one short tiptoe away from tears.

When I caught up to her at her car she'd already taken a dozen steps over that line. I hugged her from behind before she could drive away. I didn't let go as much as asked to be released. I didn't let go as much as she struggled against me. When she finally calmed down sufficiently I told her what I should have said in the restaurant.

"Look, Katydon't, you know I love you. There's no one in my family I love more than you except my folks. Whatever your decision--not just in this marriage--I'll support you. I'll support you till the day I die. So if you can tell me that this is what you truly want, that he's truly what you want, then I won't say another word. And on your wedding day, when I see you up there with my future cousin-in-law you won't see a bigger smile than mine. And when I walk up to you to congratulate the two of you you won't hear a louder voice than mine. Your happiness will be my happiness.

"I just want to see you happy. That's all that matters to me."

With that I let her go. I watched her drive away unsure as to what my little 'ole speech's effect on her was. It would be almost thirty-six hours later that I would receive a phone call from her, telling me she had decided a few things with her beau. These few things, she would explain to me, would involve ironing out how she saw their future together and the steps he needed to take to make that future happen. She would also explain to me how calm he seemed and how reassuring his voice sounded... a little too calm and a little too reassuring, she would tell me.

A week later they were broken up and she was devastated, to say the least. I felt every bit the instigator and every bit the scapegoat. I only hoped that had enough room in her broken little heart to forgive me. Aside from that fear, though, I had confidence that what I had said was right in its clarity. I didn't mince words. I told her exactly what I felt and the reasons I felt them. I didn't sugarcoat that I had a strong dislike for him or my opinion that she was far too good for him. Never once did the notion that I was being overprotective of my faux-sister enter my thoughts. My only thought was how she was my blood and that meant something to me in a way that those who don't come from a close-knit family can't ever understand. It wasn't that I wanted to interfere with my cousin's life, or that I wanted to take over running it. The only thing I wanted, the only thing I've ever wanted for her, was that she have a full, healthy life where she ultimately finds happiness and never lets go of it.

When people say they had to be cruel in order to be kind it's usually an excuse for their own inherent venom. When I had to be cruel to be kind, however, I went into with a heavy heart. Sometimes I reckon that's the only difference between thinking of yourself as wicked and being truly wicked. When you're wicked you do things devoid of personal investment. When you're only pretending to be you feel each and every tear right along with them, you hurt just as much as they do, and you die just as much as they do.

Killing Katie's dream in order that she may find another one to fulfill was probably one of the hardest tasks I've ever been asked to undertake. But I don't regret doing it. Not one inch. Not for even one second.

Breanne

And I Wonder, When I Sing Along With You, If Everything Could Ever Feel This Real Forever, If Anything Could Ever Be This Good Again

2011-05-05T00:40:00.000-07:00

--"Everlong", Foo Fighters

I have a toothache right now. I can't remember the last time I had one of those. For all my life I've never had a problem with my teeth, except for when my wisdom teeth were growing in impacted. Aside from that, I haven't had one cavity, one root canal, one sign of trouble that required any special attention on the part of my dentist.

Therein lies the problem. I'm a person who grows complacent easy. I'm easily deluded into believing that just because things are going good now that they will continue to do so ad infinitum. That's the reason I haven't been to see a dentist in almost six years. It isn't because I don't believe in preventative care--which I kind of do. It more has to do with the fact that I have a gods complex when it comes to messing around with a good thing. When I'm on a roll I'm very hesitant to do anything to mess with the streak of good fortune. Ever since 2005 I haven't had one problem with my teeth till now. During that time I really did think I was invincible, that possibly I wouldn't have to go the dentist ever again in my life.

I don't know if it's the smart bet to have taken, but it's the route I almost always seem to take. That's part of the reason I hold onto my favorites for so long. It's easier to place my faith in old standbys than risk being hurt by something new. It's easier to rely on routines than changing direction every so often. It's easier to desperately cling to old friends than put myself out there for new ones. It's easier to not read about what's going on in the world at large than it is to discover that there are serious problems out there that need solving. And, yes, it's easier to let the chips fall where they may when it comes to my health, dental or otherwise, than go out there to get that yearly check-up and discover problems.

Because when it comes down to it, I'm scared of the big bad news. I'd rather put myself in a position where I have no access to new information so as to believe the old information is still true. If I had my way it would still be 1987 and the biggest concern I would have is being thought of as the weird kid at school. I wouldn't have to worry about my body degrading, the people I care about moving further and further away from me, or something so silly as the future. Caring about my teeth, just like caring about any of the other so-called important concerns, just puts me at risk for having to worry about them. If I had my way I wouldn't have to worry about anything at all.

Not my health, not my well-being, not paying for a new condo for the next thirty years. Nothing. I just want everything to be okay and drown out anyone and anything who has the potential to tell me otherwise.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers