Manly

So it's been kind of a theme around here lately, me trying to figure out what manly means to me. It's gone along with me trying to figure out what it means to be feminine, because I know that running around like a crazy person and making myself sick isn't what being a woman is supposed to be about, no matter how much the 80s feminist superwomen I was raised by tried to convince me it was.

Here's one of the things that I am very clear on...the ability to make decisions reads as very manly to me. I don't want a puppy dog to follow me around, carrying my purse. "Whatever you want to do" should really never come out of a guy's mouth. It's a a trick to find out what I want to do and then tell me to do exactly that, but it's one of the hottest things that a guy can do.

I'm a bit of a control enthusiast, in the sense that George Lucas is probably a bit of a control enthusiast. I have more than enough responsibility to be getting on with. I'm usually running scared, a half second ahead of things blowing up, but I get my shit done. My job gets done, my contracts get fulfilled, my mortgage gets paid. Always. But after that, I have zero desire to make another freaking decision. I'd rather kick a puppy than tell another guy what to do. I'm not your friggin mommy, and I don't want to be.

Pick the movie. Plan the restaurant. Choose my outfit. If you're confident enough to go for it, order me dinner. Let me relax and not have to do everything. Lesson one in being manly around me.

Tired

I'm freaking tired. 

Exhausted, actually. To the point where I'm craving sleep the way I crave chocolate. Did you know that your body shivers, it trembles, when it is asking for sleep? It gets colder than anything, and your teeth chatter. 

Bristol has always been a revelation place for me. I show up broken and it fixes me. Two years in a row, I spent time there when I was unable to function, and while I was there I broke through into somewhere better. This has not yet been the case this year.

This year, I have things that I know I need to learn that I am refusing to. My lesson is supposed to be to let myself rest. When I've done that, things have gotten better. Some people have not been able to understand this, and a smaller number of people have tried to make me feel like shit when I draw my lines, however shaky they may be. It makes me boring, or selfish, or flat-out a bad friend. Those people have never worked 80 hours, 7 days a week, for 6 weeks in a row. What I need to remember is that it's not about the numbers. It's not about the fact that I have a full-time job and, at the moment, an equally full-time small business. I get stuck on the justifications and miss the point. 

The point is that I'm tired. That's really and truly the point. I wish I were equipped to give everyone what they need, without taking things away from myself, but it doesn't work that way. I want what I want, and what I want is a quiet room with a couch and a stack of movies. I need to find that before the quiet room becomes a padded room. When I was running around trying to tend to everyone else's needs, that padded room wasn't far off. 

I am working on knowing that I am important enough to put my needs first. Some days, I know that more than other days. At this point, it's still intellectual knowledge, not bone-and-breath knowing that I am important. I'll be happier when it gets to that point. 

MonoBoys

I always forget that the boys in Wisco are different from the boys everywhere else. I'm sure that someone will jump down my throat for saying this...like I haven't met enough midwestern boys or something...but they're different. Special different. They're wholesomer. More traditional. They give off a more monogamous vibe. Something about them says traditional, but not in a retro, ironic way like my western boys. In a more serious, no-bullshit way that confuses me. 


Opie's like that. He really actually wants a minivan and a dog, a white picket fence and someone making him dinner. It's why I knew after the first date that we weren't going to end up together. (Why we dated for another 9 months after that is a different story. A much dumber story). 


These boy scouts make me feel evil, and guilty, like I'm going to break them. I feel like a cat playing catch-and-release with a mouse. I can usually tell pretty quickly if I'm talking to a MonoBoy, but I never know when I should let him go. And let him go isn't even the right phrase to use, because they never believe me when I tell them I'm not what they want. It's more that I should push him out of the way and tell him to run for it. I should drive them out to the desert blindfolded so that they can't follow when I leave. 


So if a guy is looking at me like I'm potential GF material...which is laughable on many, many levels...and I'm looking at him like he's a snack, what am I supposed to do? When am I supposed to do it? Dropping hints and being passive-aggressive never works, and usually results in me texting Damaged to ask him to ghost-write my breakup email. (That's a fucked-up sentence right there, but it is what happens). I don't want to give up being faire flirty, but I don't want puppy dogs trying to follow me home anymore, either. It hurts too much, which possibly proves that I have a little bit of a soul left in there after all. I need a way to say this is just pretend, a way to say you're cute, but you still live in the pet store. 

Learn to Swim

Some say the end is near. Some say we'll see Armageddon soon. I certainly hope we will. I sure could use a vacation from this bullshit three ring circus sideshow. 


Sat down and had a good crying jag this evening. Once again bit off more, not only than I can chew, but more than will fit in my mouth or on my plate or in my kitchen. I sure do like my life when it's off the rails, in the weeds, exploding. 


Some say a comet will fall from the sky. Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves. Followed by faultlines that cannot sit still.


And fuck that. This will be my next six weeks, in which I pretend my last name is Sommers, either Buffy or Jamie it doesn't matter, and I can do everything. 


The Bristol site has become, oddly, my temple of shock-a-buku, the place I need to go to get a swift spiritual kick to the head. I may be broken and crazier when I finish, but I don't think I will be.


I hate my parents for teaching me, possibly or definitely too early, that no one will take care of me. Blanche DuBois was right...I have always depended on the kindness of strangers...but it has also been true that everything I have, I have gotten for myself. My house and my four cars, (and I'd like it very much if people stopped crashing into my cars now, thankyouverymuch), my education and my body. I've written albums and I've written books, and I started a faire almost six years ago with $300 in my savings account. I've gotten myself out of some bad situations, and I will get myself the thing I want so much, that I'm afraid of jinxing but will happen. I've learned to float, and I've learned to dog paddle, and I will learn to goddamn snorkel if I need to. I'm the Spinet Chick, but I'm also Patrice Dark. 


Cuz I'm praying for rain. I'm praying for tidal waves. Learn to swim. 

Frack or Fight

 I'm only happy when it rains. I know how to deal with energy or with conflict, but I don't know how to deal with the quiet. I usually feel like the calm happens when forces are gathering somewhere that's else, so I need to use that time to gear up for a fight. Best case, I'll be bored off my ass when things are not exploding. 

I don't think of myself as a drama queen, but I'm comfortable with drama. I know what to do and how to handle it...run away, find something to hit, or hunker down and pray for dawn. Those things are simple, it's easy to figure out how to do them, and it's clear when it's time to stop. I know what to do when things are bad, but when things are quiet, I'm on high alert waiting for them to go to shit. My body's waiting for something to fight, and it can't take being in that state for too very long. I'll usually go out and find something to hit. 

I'll totally try and deny it, but there are only two ways I deal with people. If I can't force a situation into one of those places, I'll probably get distracted and just wander away. I hate the point when that wicked energy fades, and I don't know how people deal with it being gone. I know it's supposed to be replaced with something else, and I know that it's supposed to be *mature* to want that something else, but I just don't. I want to frack or fight...when those are gone, I don't know what to do. 

Trespassing

You are trespassing. You are making an unwarranted incursion, a gradual or stealthy entrance, into the sphere of another. 


I don't want another girl's garden. And I do not want what I haven't got. I like my little patch of earth and sky, and I want to stay here.

(Originally, I jumped from the last to the next, but I'm afraid that the only people who can follow this next bit live in my head. JrHigh is some girl, or maybe not a girl, who says she knew me in high school. She's lying. She's possibly a current GF of one of my exes, or also possibly one of my exes, who has been badmouthing me to a guy I'm sorta kinda maybe dating. Ish. Datingish. I have issues with that word. British is a girl who was dating that same guy, and who blames me for lots of things that went wrong between her and him. JrHigh and British have been talking, which just makes the situation that much more fun for me. I also somewhat suspect that JrHigh lives inside British's head. Did that help? I'm not really sure).

Part of JrHigh's bitch fit towards me is that she thinks I'm taking something that isn't mine. It sounds like she thinks I took something from her along the way, but she hasn't told me what or who. And I know she thinks I'm taking things away from British.


I've spent a lot of time in the last two years thinking about jealousy and boundaries. Here's what I know...I can't take a guy away from anyone. If he is yours, then he is yours. And if he's not, then nothing you can do will make him yours. I don't know who I slept with that she wanted to be sleeping with, or who I slept with before she started, but I know that I have never made a man do anything he didn't want to do.

I know all this, but I am also possibly the least secure person in the world. As I've been told many times, when it comes down to it, I don't think I'm worth much. I know I didn't take British's guy, and I don't even know which guy JrHigh thinks I took, but my emotional state still hasn't caught up. (It's been encountering some iteration of you took my man, bitch! from this chick for a year and a half. You'd think it would get it by now, but I ride the emotional short bus from time to time). I'm afraid that I'm the second-place girl, the consolation vag, the thing you buy and then can't return.

I am trying so hard to hold my own patch of land. I don't want their gardens, but I'll be damned if I let them chase me out of mine. It's been touch-and-go for a long while now. I want to hit something or run away...standing still is really hard for me. I'm learning. Eddie Vedder introduced this in concert by saying this is a song I'd sing to kids...Well I won't back down, no I won't back down. You can stand me up at the gates of hell but I'll stand my ground.

Kari Ann

I got completely and totally hooked on the Celebrity Rehab/Sex Rehab/Sober House thing that VH1 was doing for awhile. Something about a hot older man being all in charge and telling people what's best for them kinda does it for me. Shocker, right? So, I was watching Sex Rehab and Kari Ann was just driving me up a wall...making princess requests, making people wait for her, refusing to do anything she didn't want to do. And then today I realized why she bothered me so much...she's putting out the same kind of princess energy that I do.

I occasionally...okay, not so occasionally...have a hard time being told no. I don't like it, and I don't see why I should have to hear it, especially if it's because of some arbitrary rule. The phrase corporate policy sends my blood pressure through the roof. It's somebody telling me I can't have what I want because of some bullshit rule that someone else made up, and I have, like, zero tolerance for that kind of frustration.

I was at the store today, trying to return something, and the guy just wouldn't do it. Not couldn't...wouldn't. Just didn't want to go out of his way to help my day suck just a little bit less. And so I felt very motivated to make his day suck just a little bit more. So while he's sticking to exactly the letter of his job, I told him his store was fucking retarded and their policy fucking sucked. I may have also told him to bite me as I walked away.

I'm not terribly proud of acting like a spoiled brat, but I don't think I would've been any prouder of myself for keeping it inside and not saying it. I would've felt angry for a lot longer if I'd have swallowed it. I don't really see the value in being fake nice when I'm actually pissed. I know this doesn't help me get my way any more, but it keeps me from feeling like I'm getting trampled all the time. A little more finesse would probably be nice, but I'll take foul-mouthed and bitchy over steamrollered any day.