bye bye 2005; 2006, pull up a chair

as i sit here in my stupid, meaningless job on new years eve, handing out tickets to people naieve enough to pay twice as much as they would have paid last night for the exact same show just because of the date on the calender (not to mention the ass-raping {i.e. $50 cover charge for $2 paper party favors} they will receive should they try to enter their friendly neighborhood bar this evening), i feel the desire to reflect on the year gone by, and anticipate the year to come.

for the world at large, 2005 was not the greatest of years. that it started with the SECOND innauguration of George "i'm an idiot" W Bush, certainly did not bode well. tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, riots, bombings, and war; the continuing erosion of political systems and freedoms around the globe, the death of a pope, two more conservative supreme court judges, and britney spears was actually allowed to breed.

well, at least Chicago won the world series.

for me personally, it was not such a bad year. i got engaged just before it started, and consequently had 90% of my wedding planned by the end of it's first month. february brought the first child born to one of the "old gang", (and november welcomed the second!). J and i discovered in May that our building had been sold for condos, and found our much beloved (and much more fabulous) current home by the end of June. summer held an engagement party on the east coast, moving, my grandfather's 90th birthday (hope i inherited his longevity!), and more wedding planning. the fall was all about weddings: first one of my closest friend's- the tall and lovely R- in which i was the maid of honor, then J's best friend's, in which he also stood. then came the usual holiday madness, my big 3-0, and the startling realization that my own wedding is now less than 6 months away. this year i returned (briefly, but i'll start again next year, i swear!) to therapy, procured health insurance for both J and myself (it only took me nine years), finally finished paying the government back for those tax years that had 'slipped my mind', went to my first writing conference, conquered my fear of writing fiction, received my first paycheck for singing with my band, discovered that i do indeed remember how to make friends, and began to think seriously about babies and graduate school (though not in that order).

all in all this year was about growing up, which- now that i'm actually doing it- really isnt' as bad as i thought it would be (though in have no plans to ever complete the job). for the world, i hope for better times in 2006; for myself, i know they will come. this next year holds my wedding to a wonderful man who is my best friend, a return (hopefully) to the world of academia, and continued growth and adventure all around. this 'life' thing is pretty fun- bumpy at times, sure, but overall well worth the price of admission.

happy new year to all of you and yours, and may life in 2006 continue to be a wild and wonderful ride.

is this what thirty has in store?

about a week ago, as i was innocently walking to work, along a street i walk down almost every day, passing by windows i see almost every day, in one particular clothing store window i spied the cutest little pajama set you've ever seen- all pinks and purples and fuzzy baby goodness- and i think my uterus actually did a backflip.

BABY URGES STARTING SO SOON!

now this may be as much a 'getting married' thing as a turning thirty thing, but it took me completely by surprise. i know that several of my blog readers have babies and are crazy about them, and i have always been happy for my childbearing friends and their respective offspring, but i never really saw that as the path i wanted to take just yet. i am too selfish, too irresponsible, too often drunk to be a parent. but lately i have been wanting a squeaming, spitting, peeing, pooping bundle of joy of my own. especially around christmas. i love christmas, i always have, but lately i can't help but think how much more amazing it will be when i have kids: J all dressed up as santa, sneaking outside to shake jingle bells and stomp around on the roof; actually buying toys for presents; leaving out cookies and milk; 'babies first christmas' ornaments...

whoa! slow down little ovary! let's get past the wedding first!

i'm such a softie...

this story made me cry- in a good way. i'm such a sucker for pet stories. happy new year everyone, hope we are all so 'lucky' in 2006.
(more on turning 30 in later posts, i swear!)

approaching the new frontier

in three days time i will turn thirty. i will have been on this earth for a full three decades, and i must say that i could not be more excited.

i wondered how i would react to this latest milestone, but really i am thrilled. i feel good about thirty, i sense good things ahead, and most of all i am overjoyed that this decade will be welcomed in with a wedding instead of a funeral.

i enjoyed my twenties. they were full of firsts and adventures and world travel. i graduated college, traveled all over the united states, moved to europe, acted in london, sang jazz in oxford, moved to chicago, 'fell in love'(or so i thought) several times over, and explored and abandoned countless careers. those are all things that i will remember fondly from this era of my life. my twenties were also full of loss and heartbreak and a whole boatload of drama. these are the things i am fully ready to leave behind. i'm ready for some roots, some grounded-ness, some semblance of self-awareness and confidence. i am fine with restricting my traveling to vacations and actually settling in one place for a while. i am more than fine with restricting my romantic drama to sunday night television, and marrying a man who makes me feel loved and happy and safe.

on sunday night my wonderful and amazing husband-to-be threw me a 'surprise' birthday party which was made ten times better by the surprise appearance (the night before) of my dearest little sister, synge. seeing synge (and the surprise birthday video message from sarachkah and vixanne- thanks gals!) reminded me how lucky i am to have such a wonderfully strong foundation of old friends in my life; these friendships give me perspective and history and make me aware of who i am and where i have come from. it was also wonderful to look around the room and see that i have created a new life and home for myself here as well, full of interesting and amazing people who love me enough to come out in the frigid chicago cold to celebrate my birthday.

all in all, i'm feeling good, ready for the serendipity of a new age. and i'm hoping that life in my thirties will continue to please and surprise me.

is this normal?

to all the married ladies (and the singles too, of course, it's just a matter of situational semantics):

did you get ex-boyfriend urges before your wedding?

just last week i changed email servers- as you probably all know since you all got the email about it- and one of the first people to write me back was a certain irish ex of mine who i haven't talked to in about a year. i loved this man, it's true, but that was long ago (six+ years, to be exact), and last time i checked i was totally over him and totally in love with my current betrothed. but after C wrote to me i had a dream about him, and lately he keeps popping into my mind. a few days ago i wrote to him and told him i'm getting married, and he wrote back and told me he's living with some girl named suzanne, and for some reason that made me incredibly jealous. i know it is horrible and selfish to think that he should be languishing somewhere, sick with the thought of me marrying another man (since he is obviously still madly in love with me, the woman of his dreams- duh), but truly, there is a part of me that wants that to be the case. and i'm disappointed that it's not.

maybe this is all because i recently developped a crush on Harry Potter, and this particular ex kind of looks like a grown up Harry Potter (yummmmmmmm). or maybe (more likely really ) i am just experiencing pre-hugest-commitment-of-my-life jitters.

but i do miss C, i really do. and i do wish that he was somewhere pining over me, i really do. there is a part of me that is still pining over him; besides J, he was the next biggest love of my life, and sometimes i wonder where we could have gone together if circumstances (and geography) had been more aligned.

any comments or suggestions? did this happen to any of you?

maybe i'll call this my monthly blog...

i just noticed (and so might you- if anyone actually still holds out hope and reads this blog) that my last entry was exactly one month ago. wow, sorry about that, but it's been an action packed month with no real signs of slowing down. so for right now i will call this my 'november entry' and make no promises of more frequent entries (except for the implied 'december entry') until after the crazy holidays wind down in january. ( just in time for the 'january entry', but you get the gist by now). since most of my readers are probably just as frazzled as me right now, i doubt that anyone will mind the infrequency.

on to the blogging.

first and foremost i must send out a hearty and heart-felt congratulations to vixanne and her hubby, who welcomed their beautiful son (lets call him angel) into the world on the day before thanksgiving. truly something to be thankful for (i'm sure he won't be hearing THAT for the rest of his life, just like i don't get told that i must be 'my parents favorite christmas present' every time someone sees my birthdate. nowadays i counter with, 'i don't know, they're dead, so they don't talk about it much'- or at least i desperately want to. but i digress...). welcome to the world little angel!

in other news, with the holiday season now upon us, i am starting to show symptoms of a wicked holiday blues coming on. i am fighting it tooth and nail, hoping that it's nothing that some christmas music, mulled wine and a return trip to my therapist can't cure. i haven't seen my therapist in over a month, and i definitely need to return. a few weeks ago my band played at a funeral (the deceased was in his forties and left behind a wife and eight year old son) and i think that's what started the emotional ball rolling. today i went to see Harry Potter and experienced a strong desire to jump into the world of the movie and never come back (i also experienced an inappropriate attraction to Daniel Radcliffe, especially considering he is a 16 year old boy, but that's another story). with the wedding a mere seven months away, i am starting to panic again, and dream of a world without adult responsibilities or worries (and WITH unicorns and magical candy). my old escapism tendencies are slipping out. i hosted thanksgiving at my house this year and got disproportionately upset that things did not turn out picture-postcard perfect; this need for perfection is becoming a troublesome pattern in my life. i am starting to wish my life was more like fiction or the movies- exciting and pretty and full of happy endings.

i am excited about christmas though, mostly. it is my absolute favorite time of the year, probably because it is the one time that a huge portion of society buys into my unrealistic fantasy-land image of the world for a month or so. even if it's saccharine and materialistically driven, at least around the holidays people pretend to love their fellow man and believe in magic and miracles. i'll take what i can get. it was also my mom's favorite time of year and i have a lot of happy memories of christmas. the holidays are the one time where my memories of my mom make me more happy than sad.

i am also excited because this year i turn thirty, and that is actually something that i'm looking forward to. my twenties, though full of adventure, were also full of drama and pain and lots and lots of self-doubt and confusion. i am hoping that my thirties will be more grounded. i still may not know for sure what i my doing with my life, but i have a way better idea of who i am and what i want now than i did at 20 or 25. so bring it on. after all, thanks to the baby boomers, 30 is now practically infancy!

let's see, what else...oh- the other day i wrote a long and cleansing email to my evil stepfather who i have not spoken to in over 5 years. it felt good just to get my gripes and grievances down on 'paper'. i sent it to him at his old email, but it was sent back as an inactive account. and now i am wondering if i should search out his current email address and send it to him, or just take it as a healthy exercise and move on. i have no desire to revive my relationship with him, the damage is done and i am perfectly happy without him in my life, but he does still have a few of my mom's things that i want, and i do want him to know how much he hurt me and why i stopped trusting him. there is also a part of me that wants to hear his side of the story. i don't know that he would respond even if i did send him the email, but i am curious. it is a pretty diplomatic diatribe, i think, especially given how coldly he treated me after my mom died. i guess i just remain eternally and naively hopeful that he would get the email and coming crying back admitting all his wrongdoings, begging my forgiveness and offering me all of her things on a silver platter (i said it was naive). maybe i should just do what my aunt says and consider all of that stuff 'lost in a fire'. they are just things, after all, and i have the most important of her belongings- her journals and photo albums (and her boobs).

so that's it for now. i'll be back in december with wedding dress news and holiday cheer. and since that's only next week, that's not too bad.

more wedding stuff

thanks for the input on the dresses and the place card dilemma (funny to call that a dilemma, considering the state of the world...); i responded to everyone's advice in the comment section of the last post. as i head off for a few days of family visiting and reception tent scouting, here are some more of my current wedding ideas for you all to chime in on if you feel the urge. watch out- i'm on a roll now!

here are some examples of the style of invitation i want. like i said, my friend jen is a letterpress printer/designer and she's going to do all of my print work. i love her stuff- it's really simple and classy and old-fashioned (like moi), and she gives me an extra discount if i run the presses for her, which is actually a lot of fun. our stuff would all be in shades of blue or green, possible with a daisy motif (jen found an old print plate she thinks would be perfect):





these are some bouquets i like. i want to use daisies and blue hydrangea (both of which grow on the farm) and go for sort of a wildflower look. i'm also thinking of putting mint (which also grows ALL OVER the farm) in the bouquet to make it smell nice:






and here are some cake ideas- nothing too wild. i'm more concerned with taste than look (ours is going to be a lemon cake with fresh blueberry filling and vanila buttercream icing- yummy), because cake is just not where i want to spend a lot of dough (pun intended). we're using fresh flowers (probably daisies again) to decorate, cuz it's about a million times cheaper than sugar flowers. oh, and vixanne, yes, cupcake cakes are still popular, and i originally thought i wanted one, but i couldn't find any that looked quite as neat as i thought they would:







yay! wedding planning! only eight months to go! (though i'm not going to go on about this for eight months, i promise...) oh, and synge, as far as bridesmaids dresses go, the color is probably going to be a dark shade of blue- either navy or something the dress company calls "sailor". i decided to go with the dessy line (which sarachkah recommended) and just let everyone pick their own style. it seems pretty reasonably priced and there are a lot of different designs, so everyone should find something that makes them feel pretty but doesn't break the bank.

the thing i'm most excited about is having all of my very favorite people in the world together in one of my favorite places in the world. that's what i'm really looking forward to (well that, and a kick-ass open bar with fresh margaritas and mojitos for five hours along with an i-pod full of all of my favorite dancin' tunes- woo hoo!).

lightening the mood

okay, no one reads my blog, i get it. or, if they do, they are too depressed by the content to comment, i get that too. i have no exciting dating life, adorable baby pictures or mucous plugs with which to draw in the readers, therefore i am making a switch. i am not promising that i will never again talk about death or fear or abortions- i gotta be me- but i am now adding wedding planning to the mix- a significantly more upbeat topic.

so settle back and breath easy; no death talk today. today is wedding talk day.

for those of you who i haven't told, we have set a date- Saturday June 24th, 2006. all of the wedding activities will take place on my grandparent's farm on the eastern shore of maryland, and all of you are invited. (well, most of the people who read this blog are invited...you know who you are...if i haven't met you in person or seen you in the last 10 years, you're probably not invited, sorry)

i have already gotten a lot of planning stuff started, because i hate my job and have a lot of free time to surf the internet and read wedding porn. i have a caterer booked (who will also do the cake and act as a day-of-event manager), an officiant (my stepmother, who is a judge), my bridal party chosen (including synge, naturally), we're using an i-pod for the music (a method i tested to much sucess at R's wedding), and, of course, we have the property reserved (being that i own 1/8th of it). i've booked a block of hotel rooms at the local comfort suites and researched all of the local b&b's; a good friend of mine who own's a letterpress printing company is going to do the save-the-dates, invitations, programs, etc.; we're making our own favors; and i am thinking that i may want to do the flowers by myself too, with a lot of help from my crafty and talented aunts. i am meeting with the rental company to go over rental and tent needs on tuesday and going dress shopping in november- though i think that i already know which dress i'm going with.

probably either this (with a blue sash):


or more likely this (with light blue or ivory detail):

the second one is the front runner- i know you can't really see it from the picture, but it looks great on- very curvy and trumpet shaped- and the ribbon detail on the back looks really cool when it's bustled. the greatest part is that both of these are BRIDESMAID dresses, which means they only cost around $300. i am still going to go out and try some more on, but i already love both of these and i know that if i keep looking for too much longer i wll fall in love with some $1000 number that would blow my budget out of the water.

that's my wedding news so far. J is being wonderful and wants to help and be involved as much as possible. he just started a second job to save up because he insists that he wants to pay for half of everything, even though i insisted that my dead folks left me plenty to foot the bill (oops! i guess i just can't do a post without mentioning the DP's at least once). now all i have to do is pray for sunshine and start hitting the gym. and about a million other details that i'm sure i haven't even considered yet.

oh, and kristoise and MAH (if you're reading), in reference to the post on MAH's blog, do you really think that i need placecards for everyone at the reception? we're doing a buffet dinner and not having any specifically designated time to sit down and eat- more of a mingling atmosphere. we're not expecting more than 90 and everyone should at least know several people they could sit with besides me and J- is it too terribly improper to ask people to seat themselves?

a day in a life

yesterday was a beautiful day in chicago; temperatures were in the low seventies with a slight breeze, bright fall sunshine, and a perfect blue autumn sky. in the morning two of my friends woke up with very different plans for the day. one got up early to catch a plane to miami to begin her three day honeymoon with her new husband. the other woke up around nine in order to make her eleven o'clock appointment at planned parenthood to have an abortion.

i spent the bulk of the afternoon before work wandering in the park and thinking about the distance and closeness between these two significant days. both women faced the day with the man who shared their position, men they love, though differently. each woman will most likely remember the day for the rest of her life, though one was starting down a path, while the other was choosing not to follow the map. both are truly adult actions, the kind i still have a hard time imagining myself old enough to experience. both are very concious decisions on how each of these women want to live their life; neither is a better or worse decision (though, in the eyes of many people, they represent the two opposing ends of the scale of social acceptablity).

thinking about my friends' days, i felt an odd mix of sadness and hope. sadness for the loss of innocence and the frightening ineveitability of adulthood; i cannot protect or prepare either my friends or myself for the whirl of emotions we are bound to experience over the next few months and years, or the highs and lows we are each bound to face. hope for what is still to come for each of us, for the support and love that they had going into their respective days, and which- hopefully- we will all have for the many other wildly divergent days to come.

i love these women. i champion their choices, and am glad that they each had the chance to make them. i hope that women can always make such choices, and do so always with love and support.

growing pains; or the one where i make a wedding all about death

this sunday my friend R got married. R and i have been friends since the first day of college, some 12 (!!really?!!) years ago, and while that is less than the 16 years i have known many of you, my small but important group of blog readers, that is still a long time. R is a part of my everyday life, she has been for the last six years, and we have very much wandered into adulthood together, both at college and here in chicago. i was MOH in R's wedding, a job which she will also serve in mine. her wedding was fun and beautiful, and totally 'them'; the bride and groom were ridiculously happy and in love, and a good time was had by all. i am very very happy for her newly married status- i adore her new husband K, they are a perfect fit, and though i am not a huge fan of his children (they are cute, but they are also spoiled, totally undisciplined and ridiculously hard to control), i know that she loves her stepsons very much and they love her. over all they make a lovely little family.

so why did i wake up the morning after her wedding feeling so depressed?

i feel like i have lost my friend, which i know is stupid, because things will not be any different now than they were for the last three years that she has been dating K, and, on an even more relevant note, i am in my very own happy, headed-to-the-altar relationship. so why the blue mood?

well, here's what my therapist thinks. we had something of a breakthrough in our last session. we figured out that absolutley all of my relationships are deeply affected and influenced by my fear of death. not just loss, but death. and not my own death, but the death of people around me. this is not really a breakthrough to many of my loyal readers, as i have discussed this before, but we did get more specific with the exact impact of my fears. i am freaked out about everyone around me getting married (myself included) for several reasons: 1. there is a part of me that thinks that anyone would be crazy to put all of their emotional eggs in one basket and count on one person to be there for them for the rest of their lives. i did that with my mom, and look where it got me. 2. being someone who has an extremely difficult time living in the present instead of worrying about the future, i see this rash of weddings as one in a predictable timeline of major life phases- everyone gets married, then they have kids, then some of them get divorced and remarried, then they start to die off. i know this is extremely morbid, but it is just the way my mind works. i guess in a more normal timeline i would include the mileposts of their kids graduating from college, geting married and having their own kids, but my parents didn't make it that far, so my timeline is a little shorter than most. i guess seeing R get married just reminds me that most of my friends are approaching phase two, which leads to phase three and then- my ultimate fear- to phase four. my therapist has already helped me discover that the reason i put so much pressure on myself to adhere to a strict deadline (funny choice of words) with my own life achievements is because a part of me is convinced that i won't live longer than my parents did. so in my mind, time is literally running out, i've only got 16-29 years left. and even if i do make it further than they did, growing up just puts me that much closer to losing more of my loved ones, and i don't think i'm going to react so well to that.

which way is Neverland?

man, i need to lighten up. and being obsessed with CSI, a show about random and unusual deaths, is probably not a healthy choice right now. i need to get a more cheerful hobby. maybe i will revisit pottery.

on a happier note, J and i were both approved for health insurance by (my hero) Aetna. so that makes us a little less likely to die young, right? at least now i can make J go the hospital when my hypochondriac death paranoia kicks in.

and the wedding really was beautiful. and a lot of fun. R looked like a princess, the ceremony was short but emotional, the space was fantastic, the food was good, the music was great (my band, i might add, playing instrumental jazz- my boys did good!), and the whole thing went off without even one snafu (well, one of the bridal party members' leather coat caught on fire in the dressing room- burned a hole right through it- but that didn't really affect the day). i only hope for such smooth sailing on my own day. though i must say that being a MOH is hard- lots of work and not a cheap job either. i'm glad that R is now experienced in the difficulty of wedding planning; it should make her a supremely sympathetic and supportive MOH for me!

well, that's my depressing ramble for the day. now i must go write fiction- at least in fiction i actually CAN control death.

a little test that told me what i already knew

a friend sent me this test that determines your political belief system. as i suspected, i am a social and economic liberal and best classified as a socialist. on their celebrity chart i fall between hilary clinton and ghandi- not a bad spot. i think it's funny that someone on the opposite side of the chart would be between darth vader and stalin. and there are also apparently also ideologies that would place you between ted nugent and donald trump, or between adam sandler and martin luther king. creepy.

anyway, enjoy. hope none of you fall on the dark side.

tagging is for grafitti artists

okay synge, here is my shamefully shaggable list, also in no particular order. i hope i did this picture thing right.
and the winners are:


i don't know why, but i have always found Ice Cube sexy. maybe it's the gangsta thing. maybe it's the fact that he's not a half bad actor, and he is definitely a smart business man, but he's still also a total badass. who just happens to make kiddie moves and silly comedies. he just such a renaissance man


talent, it's all about the talent. and PSH has got plenty of that. i can't wait to see capote. he's also kind of sloppy/cocky sexy, and that is oddly attractive to me (from a distance).


recently i have been obsessed with CSI, and therefore i think that Grissom is totally hot. it's all the science talk and his slyly condescending intelligence. and the fact that he's an entomologist who signs, speaks fluent spanish and just happens to be a sensitive- if somewhat emotionally detached- forensic genius. once again, he's a renaissance man. ( i think i see a pattern)


i can't explain it. and i won't try. burt reynolds is sexy, even as an old man. he's just is.


how can you mess with a classic? yes, he's eighty years old, but paul newman will always be beautiful .

i removed mick jagger from my original list because Ice Cube is sexier, and Mick is kind of small in stature which has never turned me on. if i believed in such things as tagging people, i would say i tag sarachkah and vixanne. but i don't really believe in such actions, so do as you please.

shared experience

i recently received an email from someone from my past who just lost her mother. much like myself she was feeling a little at a loss to talk to her "normal" (read: have both parents) friends, and asked if i would be willing to talk to her. naturally, i was more than willing- i was touched and honored at the chance to talk and listen to a fellow parent-less person. we "dead parents society" members have to stick together. anyway, here is part of my response to her, just in case there are any other DPS members lurking about who could benefit. i will preface this by saying that in no way do i propose that i'm an expert on parent loss- just because i've been through it does not make me the end-all, be-all parentless guru- i am just speaking from my own experiences in hopes that they may help provide a sense of common experience or understanding. here it is:

Where to begin...I know that there is nothing I can do or say to make you feel any better. The most that anyone can do for you right now is to listen, endlessly listen, and give you full and unapologetic permission to feel any and all of the awful emotions that you will feel over the next several months. I do say 'months', because I believe that after the first year it does get more bearable, not better really, but more bearable. I like to equate it to a debilitating injury or handicap- you will never again be able to run or jump just like the other kids, but you do learn to adjust to your limitations and live a fairly normal life. It's been almost ten years since she died and I still think about my mom at least once a day. Though it doesn't always make me cry, it always makes me a little sad. Whenever anyone mentions their own mom, I think of mine. Whenever anyone bitches or complains about their own mother, I hate them just a little for having a mother to bitch about. Don't get me wrong, I like to be reminded of her, I still want and NEED to remember her, it's just hard, and- I won't lie to you- it probably always will be. I wish I could give you better news.

Though I don't have great news of total recovery, I do have a few bits of advice that may help with the coping. I preface this with the fact that my advice can only come from my own experiences, and therefore it may not apply to or work for you at all, but then again they might, so here goes. My first recomendation is to keep a journal of this time. Write down your memories of your mother, now, while they are fresh in your mind. I did not do this, and I wish I had; my memories of her are growing fuzzy and slipping away and if I lose my memories I will never forgive myself. I know it may be hard, but I'm sure it will also be comforting to remember her, and believe me, you will be glad later on to have those memories preserved. Besides, journaling is an incredibly theraputic experience, releasing all of your deepest and darkest thoughts into a forum where they cannot be judged or make other people uncomfortable. It feels very freeing to get all of those hard and painful thoughts out of your head and onto paper- like cleaning the muck out of your mind. My second suggestion is to keep your mother in your life. This applies very specifically to my own experience. When my mom died I ran away and tried very hard to put her, and losing her, as completely out of my mind as I could. Years later, when my Dad died, all of that boxed up and ignored grief floated right back up to the surface, just as big as before and worse than ever. It was overwhelming. Grief cannot be avoided, so let yourself go through it. As I am sure you are already learning, ignoring it will not make it go away. Keep her in your life, talk about her when she's on your mind, remember her- she was and will always be a major part of your life. If you are ready, tell the people in your life not to avoid the subject or steer away from parent talk. I know that people seem uncomfortable talking about it around you, but the more normal you make it the more normal it will become for them. The big pink elephant in the room will not get any smaller or any less pink, so why not learn to live with it.

That's a lot for now, so I will stop. I am glad you wrote to me, and I am more than happy to listen. I know how valuable that is- I need it too. It may sound morbid, but I am always excited when I meet someone else who has lost a parent; it makes me feel more normal, less alone, it reminds me that I am not the only one who knows what this feels like and how much it sucks. That's why I started the blog (though from time to time I do stray off topic...), to share my experiences in hopes that it will make someone else feel less alone. I have been taking some creative non-fiction classes and some day I hope to put together a collection of essays about my own and other people's similar experiences with parent loss. There is almost nothing written about people who lose their parents in their 20's- young children and middle-aged people have cornered the parent-loss market. I am also working on adapting some of my memories of my parents into a collection of short stories. They were wonderful and interesting people, and I don't want them to be forgotten, by me or anyone else.

I will end on an up note by informing you of the perks you will receive as a new member of the "Dead Parents Society". You now have the unique power to make a whole room full of people squirm and laugh uncomfortably at crass dead parent jokes that only you can get away with. You have a new holiday to add to the calender- your mother's "death day"- which you can milk for time off, fancy dinners and foot rubs. You can totally crush anyone out dated enough to use the lame-o "Yo Momma!" comeback. Welcome to the club- the support is great, but the membership dues are a bitch!

On a more sincere note, you can also now be assured of your own strength of character, because after you have survived this, you can survive almost anything. Life seems a little less scary when you know you can handle whatever comes your way. I don't know what your religious beliefs are- mine are a little fast and loose to say the least- but I find a great deal of comfort in knowing that I now have two kick-ass guardian angels watching my back (and you wouldn't believe how many raffle grand-prizes I have won in the last few years- thanks Mom and Dad!).

Feel free to write to me any time, about anything at all. I will always listen and I will usually understand.

risky business

it's official: i am uninsurable. yep, i'm a huge risk, me and my CRAZY therapy going ways. i mean, that makes sense, it would follow that since i went to therapy after the sudden death of my one remaining parent i CLEARLY have mental problems that will end up costing blue cross blue shield MILLIONS of dollars. and my instability is even more clear considering i then went BACK to therapy a year later, which proves that i was not effectively cured of my sadness in a reasonable time frame. terminal case. who takes longer than a year to grieve their parents? a HUGE insurance risk, that's who!

fuck blue cross. i wouldn't want to be insured by someone with "cross" in their name anyway. i'm applying to aetna, they have dental (nyah, nyah, nyah-stupid blue cross!). and if they ask me about therapy, i'm going to lie my ass off. aetna doesn't cover mental health unless you have a genetic or biological imbalance (ie. a REAL mental health issue) anyway, and apparently the only way to get by in the world of corporate america (which, sadly, in this fucked up system includes healthcare) is to lie. pants on fire, here i come.

on the topic of other risks, today i start a ficiton writing class at northwestern. i am terrified. i can't even make up a lie to cover my ass with insurance investigators, how am i going to make up a whole story? but that's why i'm doing it, i like to scare the shit out of myself from time to time. it keeps me on my toes, keeps me moving forward. i love my teacher, that was a big motivation too. he taught my last two nonfiction classes, and he really likes my work. i am thinking that what i want to focus on is fictionalizing stories from my own life and my parents' lives. that may sound like a cop out, but i think it could be a good balance for me. this summer at the iowa festival i met a writer whos work i loved, and when i asked him about his stories he admitted that several of them were deeply based in his own experiences. he too lost his parents, but when he went to write about it literally it just wouldn't come out. so he embellished a little, moved some things around, made some stuff up, and found that that method worked much better. i have a feeling it may work for me too. whenever i try to write about them i get so bogged down with the imprecision of my memories. i am the only one still alive to tell a lot of these stories, i can't double check the facts, so it would be so much easier if i could just write what i do remember (or in some case what i WANT to remember) and make up the rest. that would allow me to fill in some of the gaps in my own memories as well. or is that propagating an illusion, a deuluded reality, making fact into fiction to suit my own desires and help me cope with pain?

maybe blue cross is right, maybe i AM crazy....



nah, fuck them.

i am officially a simon and garfunkel song

my therapist told me on friday that he gets the impression that i have made myself into some sort of an 'island', that i isolate myself from people and from life because of my fears of getting hurt. the therapist i went to right after my mom died used the same metaphor, that i was 'an island', and 'a ship lost at sea'.

synge and i used to laugh at these psycho-babbly images.

i always wanted to say, "but an island never cries, and i cry all the time..."

thptttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt

(WARNING: today i am bored, and i have exhausted the internet, so i am taking out my boredom on my blog. feel free to stop reading now if pointless rambling, whining and bitching are not what you're in the mood for. THIS IS A LONG POST! read at your own risk; and don't say i didn't warn you.)

first and foremost, i want to thank everyone who responded to my last post (including those who repsonded via email). that was a crappy day, and i really did appreciate your support and sympathy. you are all wonderful friends, and i am glad to have you in my life, even if i don't say it often enough (or talk to any of you often enough, for that matter). i am back in therapy now, and slowly but surely working through my grief issues. hopefully someday i will not automatically sink into a funk every time labor day rolls around.

on a similar note, i have recently- after many many years of foolish and forgetful avoidance- applied for health insurance (which i will pay for out of my own pocket, since i seem destined never to hold a job which gives me any benefits whatsoever) with blue cross & blue shield. now, i am an overly honest person, honest to a genuine fault, honest to the point that i find it nearly impossible to lie to people when asked a direct question. in the realm of insurance, that fault may have bitten me in the ass. when asked on the application, amongst a million different questions of non-existant ailments, if i had attended therapy in the last ten years, i said yes. and apparently that is an automatic red flag, because- even though i have never taken or been prescribed any psychiatric drugs, been diagnosed with depression or anxiety, or even seen an actual psychiatrist or psychologist(my therapists were all liscensed clinical social workers)- this may mean that i have mental problems that may end up requiring expensive treatment or medication in the future, therefore driving up my premium by a ridiculous degree or even making me uninsurable. when the nurse called to "ask a few questions" about my application, she told me that they always call for a phone interview when someone lists that they've been to therapy. so, they will make me pay more because i chose to handle my problems instead of ignoring them; they will make me pay more because i pay someone to listen to me talk about my life; they will make me pay more, ultimately, because i was too stupid to just lie to them and say that i had never been to therapy. i never gave my SSN to any of my therapists, and they were both in private practice; the insurance company would never have found out about it. and they never asked about my family medical history, which happens to contain a startling amount of cancer and alcoholism. no, they are far more concerned that i am talking to a stranger about my problems. THAT is what makes me a risk.

i hate being honest.

on a totally different note, i must explain why i never blogged about the hurricane. i tried, but i didn't have anything to say that everyone else has not already said. jay's good friend dave is from NOLA, and all of his old high school friends are now moving to chicago because their houses are gone. it is such a tragic and infuriating situation. our government should be ashamed of what happened, and what is still happening in this, the richest and most arrogant nation in the world. and it sucks that bush will never really have to pay for his blatant failure to take care of american citizens, because he can't be re-elected anyway.

i donated some money to mercy corps and felt guilty that i couldn't do more.

other than that, well, i guess i am left with just pure rambling. i am annoyed at britney spears; she is FROM louisiana, and all she did was "pray" for the hurricane vicitims. how about writing out a big fat check, you white trash, no-talent home-wrecker? now i'm just being bitchy. i am so proud of synge for helping out in a more direct way, by protesting and helping out with people relocated to brooklyn. i wish i could be more selfless and involved like that. i am bored with wedding planning. i feel like i have done as much as i can do for now, and now i just have to wait around until the date is a little closer, when i am sure that i will realize that i have been wasting all of this time and have way more to do that i thought. i am the MOH at my friend R's wedding in just about a month, and right now i am focused on fulfilling all of those duties, and hoping that people show up the shower i'm throwing for her this weekend (no one is rsvp'ing, so i have no idea what to expect). then i feel guilty for even thinking about wedding stuff when there are 100,000 new homeless people in the south.

i have recently discovered that i have seasonal allergies, which sucks, because i have never been allergic to anything before, so i thought i was safe, but apparently you can develop allergies at any time. so now i sneeze a lot and my eyes are constantly itchy because- i'm told- the ragweed is blooming.

and today it looks like winter, but it is september and way too early to be winter, even here in the cold cold north, and if it IS winter already that means i have almost eight months of cold grey weather, weight gain and the blues to look forward to and I AM JUST NOT READY!!!!

can you tell that my period is right around the corner?

i am also (surprise, surprise) having school and career doubts again. will i ever figure out what i want to do with my life??? my therapist tells me that i don't need to have everything figured out right now, that i will know what's right for me when i am ready, that i am exactly where i need to be right now, and i need to stop being so hard on myself. and i can buy that, most of the time, and it is very comforting, but then old habits of worrying and pressuring myself pop up. i have been talking about the writing thing, but whenever i am between classes i never have the discipline to make myself write on a daily basis, so i wonder about my devotion. and i am not sure if journalism is the right thing for me; i may be too emotional or too loose in my writing style for straight reporting. and if i go for a masters in creative non-ficiton or fiction instead, well that doesn't leave me any more employable than i am now, except that i could teach at a community college, but do i want to do that or would i be any good at it or would i even be able to find a job doing that anyway?

as you can see, i am a jumbled, hormonal mess.

thpppppppppppppppppptttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!

thanks for listening, if you made it to the end, you deserve a medal. seriously, you are a saint, go out and buy yourself an ice cream or something.

another crappy holiday

today is my dad's death day. i totally forgot it, i didn't remember it at all until a friend of mine sent me an e-card this morning to see how i was 'holding up'.

two years, he's been dead for two years.

last session i talked to me therapist about J, and through that discussion we also ended up talking about my dad. i said that i think that already, at 32, J has accomplished what my dad never managed- he recognized his weaknesses and his mistakes and then he willingly made a change in himself and his behavior. my dad, at 59, was just starting to work on these things when he died. it makes me so sad to think that he was so close to finally figuring himself out, but he never got a chance to finish the job.

my therapist - i'll call him scott (cuz that's his name)- asked me if i felt like our relationship was resolved when he died. i said no, that we had just started down that path when he went off and drove into a ditch. that makes me even more sad. we were so close to being friends, so close to finally having a real relationship with each other, and that chance was taken from us. again. i had resolved myself to the fact that we would never have a normal father/daughter relationship, but we could have been friends. we were so close. it's not fair that we never got that.

i envy people who are close to their parents as adults. hell, i envy people who can't stand their parent's as adults. i want that. i want to know my parents as peers, as real people, to have a friendship with them. i want to argue with my mother as her equal and say 'no' to my dad as a grown-up. i want to go to dinner with them and pick up the check. i want to call them and ask them for relationship advice. i want to get tipsy with them and talk about my fears and hopes and dreams for the future.

i miss my dad. i'm not even close to recognizing his death, and i don't know when i will be. at my wedding? when my first child is born? every holiday and birthday that he's not there for?

this sucks. it just really sucks.

dreaming of tall towers and deep, blue ponds

Kristoise asked an interesting question on a comment to the last post which peaked my scientific interest, and i ran with it much further than i had expected to, so i decided to make it it's own post. she asked me what the difference is between therapy, cognitive therapy and psychoanalysis. i kind of knew, but not as clearly as i would like, so i did a little research, and here is what i found:

-"therapy", as i have known it, is just basic listening and responding; most of my therapists have been licensed clinical social workers, who are defined as follows: 'A social worker trained in psychotherapy who helps individuals deal with a variety of mental health and daily living problems to improve overall functioning. A social worker usually has a master's degree in social work and has studied sociology, growth and development, mental health theory and practice, human behavior/social environment, psychology, research methods.' pretty general stuff, but it gets the job done.

- 'cognitive' and 'behavioral therapy' (or 'cognitive behavioral therapy') is more about recognizing patterns and behaviors in order to change them. to be more specific: 'Cognitive therapy teaches you how certain thinking patterns are causing your symptoms — by giving you a distorted picture of what's going on in your life, and making you feel anxious. Behavior therapy helps you weaken the connections between troublesome situations and your habitual reactions to them. Reactions such as fear, depression or rage, and self-defeating or self-damaging behavior. It also teaches you how to calm your mind and body, so you can feel better, think more clearly, and make better decisions.depressed or angry for no good reason, or provoking you into ill-chosen actions.' sounds good and logical to me- this i am looking forward to trying.

- 'psychoanylisis' is the juicy stuff, the stuff that everyone wants to learn about in psychology class (or at least i did); it was freud's baby, and includes all of those crazy, subconcious freudian ideas. even it's definition sounds wack: 'Psychoanalysis is a family of psychological theories and methods that work to elucidate connections among unconscious components of patients' mental processes, and to do so in a systematic way through a process of tracing out associations. In classical psychoanalysis, the fundamental subject matter is the unconscious patterns of life as they become revealed through the the patient's free associations. The analyst's goal is to help liberate the patient from unexamined or unconscious barriers of transference and resistance, that is, past patterns of relatedness that are no longer serviceable or that inhibit freedom.' it's all about dreams and repressed behavior and suconcious desires as being the root of and answer to your neuroses; you know, oral fixation and anal retentiveness as a child, penis envy as an adolescent, a secret desire to bed your mom and kill your dad (or vice versa), all as evidenced from free associative (aka: babbling) observations made while lying on your back on a couch. freud thought everything was really about sex or death; though i don't totally disagree, i think psychoanalysis is a load of hooey. but the theories are interesting to hear.

so, kristoise, there is my (lengthy) answer to your question. i wonder if i only answered so thoroughly because i knew i was talking to a scientist? freud would probably say i have some deep seeded desire to please you in order to enhance my own sexual identity. i think i am just curious and like looking things up on the internet. i'll ask my therapist tomorrow and see what he thinks.

do i look like brenda to you?

therapy went very well. i like my new therapist guy; he seems smart and empathetic and much much more proactive that my last one (and that's just from one meeting). i also like that he seems closer to my own age. i was thinking about this after our session and wondering why it made a difference, and i think that my last therapist just seemed to have this detached, older, grandmother-figure vibe about her that did not make me feel totally open to sharing every tawdry detail of my life. she seemed more removed and 'above it all' than the new guy, and that was not effective for me at all. i also like the new guy because he has a background in cognative therapy and pscyho-analysis, though he said he would only throw in those viewpoints if the client wants them, if they seemed to fit the situation and if the client was up to it intellectually. the cogantive therapy background is particularly interesting to me because it's all about recognizing behaviors and then learning to change them, which is what i want to do. the psycho-anaylis could be fun just for laughs, as i tend to think it is rather subjective bullshit. mostly, i am just honored that he clearly thinks i am "up to it intellectually".

for our first meeting we mostly just got to know eachother, him telling me about his training and professional background and me answering his many questions about my own background with long, tangential rambles. i realized that i like talking all about myself and my background in a guilt free setting. i guess everyone would. it's nice to talk about yourself and not feel selfish, boring or self-centered. ah, the joys of paying someone to listen.

somewhere near the end of the session i casually mentioned 'six feet under' and he asked me if anyone had ever told me that i look like brenda (Rachel Griffiths) from the show. i said yes, many times, though he didn't have to worry as i am not a recovering sex addict atheist with an odd attraction to my twin brother. i have been getting the brenda thing a lot lately as the show is drawing to a (sniff,sniff) close. i think she is beautiful, and certainly an amazing actress, but i do not think that we look all that alike. mainly it's just the hair and the eyes; her face is much more square and mannish than mine, and she's about three feet taller. plus, she named her child 'banjo', and i would never do that to a child. i liked it better when people used to say i looked like Juliette Binoche.

in reference to a few responses to my last post, i feel i must clarify. my fear of marriage has nothing to do with a fear of the instituion itself, and i also suspect that once it is done i will feel no differently towards J. my fear of marriage comes from a fear of formally bringing someone into my life knowing that i may lose him someday, either to death or abandonment. i am not afraid that my relationship with J will weaken or grow stale when we get married, i am afraid that he wil die. which i know is silly because of course he will die, some day. kristoise, i think you are right, that i would feel just as bad if i lost J now as i would if we were married. but it's the public proclamation of it all, the 'we will be together forever and ever, or til DEATH do us part' that seems daunting. forever and ever has been a cut a little short and death had done me part a few too many times for my taste, and i almost feel like publically proclaiming it is a jinx. i may not even include that line in our vows, or may reword it somehow. if J can ask me not to include 'god' in the ceremony, i can ask him not to include 'death'. vixanne, i agree with you too; it really is just a huge party, and in that respect i am definitely looking forward to the wedding. and no, we haven't registered yet, but we will soon, i promise,; we are thinking it will be at Target and Crate and Barrel. as soon as we get it done you will be the first to know.

well, i just took two benadryl, non-drowsy formula, and they are making me feel high, so i must cut this short for now. i will post again very soon though, because i am desperate to chime in on the last episode of 'six feet under', and i have more to say about weddings and loss and my new favorite therapist (who i will see again this weekend- yea!).

in the meantime, i highly recommend taking two benedryl non-drowsy pills if you want a quick and legal high. i haven't felt this wacked out in a while...

therapy-eve (like christmas eve...only not at all...)

so tomorrow i start therapy with the guy that J's therapist recommended. that's right, a guy, but he's gay, so that made it okay for me. call me crazy (no joke intended), but i would not feel comfortable with a straight male therapist; somehow a gay man is not so threatening. not to stereotype, but i assume a gay man would be more sympathetic. i talked to him on the phone, and he sounded cool- he congratulated me for recognizing that my old therapist wasn't working for me, said that lot's of people just stay with people they don't really like. he also said that he is very interactive and hands on in his style, which is much more of what i'm looking for. my last therapist just sat and listened and then basically repeated back to me what i had said. i could accomplish that with a tape recorder.

in the spirit of my upcoming emotional exploration, i had a pre-therapy session of my favorite kind last tuesday with J: magaritas at our favorite mexican restaurant. whenever we go there (which is as often as the budget permits) we end up having very postive, soul-searching talks, and this week was no exception. in fact, about a half a pitcher in, we had an epiphany, or at least a very interesting realization. all of my fear of commitment and fear of marriage and fear that everyone around me is dead if they are five minutes late comes directly from my belief that everyone i get close to will be taken away from me. because they always have been- from my dad (as a child and then literally, with his death), his wives, K and C (my childhood surrogate family), my stepfather and stepbrothers, my mom's boyfriends, to (the ultimate) my mom, the one person who swore she would never leave. so now i am trying to push J away, because i assume he will leave anyway. i am testing him to see if he will leave, because i assume he will. i am freaked out by marriage because i am terrified to count on someone again, to cast myself in with someone else who i believe will get taken (or go)away again. in other words, MAJOR fear of abandonment. and maybe this doesn't sound like such a revelation, but for some reason it seemed like it to me. i guess because i looked beyond the normal 'people who left me' list and noticed that there were even more, that almost everyone i had grown attached to as a child had gone away. i grew up so seperated from my extended family, and anyone else i tried to 'adopt' went away. i grew up expecting to be left or forgotten about.

the only exceptions, and they came later in my teens, are my friends, many of whom read this blog. so thank you all, thanks for being the ones who stayed. i guess that means i'd feel okay about marrying any of you.

the greatest thing about this revelation is that J made it. and so now he understands why i run away and why i sometimes act crazy and try to push all of his buttons at once. so maybe now it won't work on him. i guess i will just have to try to accept that he'll be the exception to the rule, that he won't leave, or at least not for a really, really, really long time.

and i want to believe that so very much. i am tired of being scared, i want to just be happy and trusting and open. i love J and i want to believe that we will be allowed to grow old together.

maybe my new therapist will help me begin to believe. i'm sure he'll be impressed that i'm coming in with so much homework started (but then i always have been a teacher's pet). maybe i should suggest to him that we have margaritas for our session, just to get the ball rolling...

watch this, you'll like it

i have been desperately in need of a laugh lately, and this did the trick. hope it works for you too.
watch it, really, it's very very weird and funny.

more blogging soon, i promise.

and i'm not Jewish OR Catholic...

why do i always feel so guilty? even when i am completely innocent, or at least guilty of nothing more than doing something for myself, i feel totally and utterly stricken with guilt. sick with it. to the point that i write long, guilt-stricken letters to people that i'm not even close friends with, just so that they won't hate me or think i'm a bad person. and, i stress, people i'm not even close friends with. why do i feel this constant need to solve everyone's problems, make everyone happy, and generally try to save the day?

i need to get over this. i need to realize that i will never be able to make everyone happy. full stop. end of story.

so here's the beginning of the story: a girl i work with asked me to pick up a shift for her next month. she is going out of town and misjudged the dates of her trip when she put in her schedule request, so she is scheduled to work one day that she'll be gone. i told her i'd probably be able to work, but i'd have to check. i checked, and, sure enough, that is the day that i was planning to go to 'movies in the park', a big outdoor film festival held on tuesdays in july and august. it runs several tuesdays, but that week's film is the only one i am interested in seeing- 'the hustler', with paul newman. J and i go to movies in the park every summer, it's one of our traditional summer outings, and sad as that may be, it's a big deal to me. so i stupidly told my co-worker that i couldn't work because i really wanted to go to movies in the park that night. silly me, i didn't just lie and say i had something i couldn't get out of that night, i told the truth. bad move. she kind of huffed away, saying nevermind, and mumbling something about how no one ever covers hers shifts. beyond that, another guy we work with, someone i actually consider a friend, already told her he would work if she couldn't find anyone else- he wanted to be a last resort because his dad and little sisters are in town that night. i, of course, immediatly felt crippled with guilt. why? because i didn't give up my own plans and my own night off to help out a co-worker- no, make that TWO co-workers, one of which is a friend.

and now i feel like an evil, evil, EVIL bitch.

so i wrote this co-worker an email (even worse, i'm a PASSIVE evil bitch), telling her of my overwhelming guilt, my future willingness to help her out in any other situation that i can, and calling myself all sorts of bad names. she wrote me back: "Not your problem. I'll be home in California so I won't be working that day anyway. I'll just be more careful about when I work for other people from now on."

man. talk about salt on the wound.

so my question is this- why do i feel so guilty? i am not killing her family, causing her bodily harm, emptying her bank account or otherwise hurting her in any way. i made her no promises, and i have absolutley no obligation to work- it's my rightful, scheduled day off. and this girl is not even my friend. she won't have to work- essentially the shift is covered. i even called around for her to see if i could persuade someone else to work- did her job for her, technically. as she said herself (though snarkily):THIS IS NOT MY PROBLEM.

but still the guilt persists. if it wasn't too repetitious, i would say this is yet another sign that i need therapy. guilt complex, irrational need to please others, probably because of something my parents did or did not do...

dammit- i get all of the guilt of religion, with none of the comfort.

(totally off the guilt subject: if you're looking for news from my iowa city workshop experience, read below. i actually used links, and i'm pretty proud of myself)

catch up

okay, so like a rodent's advanced scheduling, my plan to blog more often is once again unraveling. but i perservere...

thanks to everyone who sent kind and supportive words in response to my iowa city post. i felt the love, really i did. actually, my time in iowa turned out to be a great experience- i met some fantastic fellow writers, made some friends, gained some perspective and focus on my writing goals, bought a ton of books, and found some vintage scarves for wedding decorations. i realized (and was reminded by one of the women i met there) that i am much better at making friends than i thought i was, and generally recharged my independance and self-esteem. i also decided that i could never live in the middle of the midwest; lake michigan may not be an ocean, but at least it gives the illusion of coastal living.

my workshop itself was a little less than gratifying, but i made the most of it. the teacher was not what i wanted her to be- she was a little cold and withdrawn, not quite as hands on and inspiring as i had hoped- and the workload did not kick my butt as much as i had expected, but i got a good start on some stories about my dad that have been floating in my head for a while. and, most importantly, i met some other writers who are interested in sharing work and critiques online. yea for community! i also met some really cool writers/speakers, including one who was my mini intellectual crush for the (last two days of) the week, and who agreed to help me with my submission to the Oxford American.

(in case Julia or Lauren are reading: i emailed him telling him how much i love his book, and he emailed me back right away- {girlish squeal!}. for the rest of you, his book really is great, you should read it)

(and in case any of the rest of you are indignantly judging my betrayal of J, he knows all about my little literary crush. 'i'm a good girl, i am...' )

(you should also check out this book- she was a great speaker as well)

another interesting outcome of the week was that i realized there are a lot of people around my age who have lost parents. at least half of our class had lost at least one parent, and one other girl had lost both. i always like to meet other "adult orphans"(does that sound morbid?). it's good to share experiences and it makes me feel less freakish, which is nice. it also made me realize that a lot of really great writing has been (and is being) inspired by loss, and that's something i know i've got down. i like to think of it as my artistic liscense- i have suffered, therefore i am validated in my artistic expression. therefore my pain and my point of view are interesting enough to subject others to. total bullshit, i know, but it works for me. anything that keeps the ink flowing. i think i am going to write a collection of stories about my father.

so that's enough for now. more later. i hope, i promise... (squeak squeak)

stretching

so here i am in lovely iowa city. trying to be a writer. ho hum.

i was terrified of coming here, for so many reasons. first and foremost, i am not particularly good at making friends, and though i like being alone, i do need social contact after a while, so the thought of spending six days in a strange town surrounded by no one i know was a bit unnerving. secondly, the workshop i am taking is called 'family memoirs' and the thought of spending six days in a strange town surrounded by no one i know while being forced to think about my dead parents thrilled me even less. oh, and then there's the whole 'who am i fooling, i'm not a real writer and i probably never will be; this is just another wild goose chase for a career that i will never be able to decide upon' line of thought.

fun stuff.

but, so far so good. i have actually managed to bypass my usual shyness, and (with the help of two nerve building glasses of reisling) i actually initiated a group dinner last night. and i have been talking to strangers left and right.
in fact, i am off to dinner right now, so more later, but so far so good. all i have to do now is deal with the parents stuff, and that should be a piece of cake...

right?

thanks...

for the support everyone. not that i was surprised to get such a pro-therapy response from all of my therapy-attending friends... i am going to call J's therapist for a recommendation as soon as i get back from iowa city. i know it will take time, and it will be hard, and that i will never be totally "cured" of being sad about my parents. i just want to be able to think about them without crying.
lately, i have been getting really sad about my dad. today, J and i were driving in to work along lakeshore drive, listening to a sam cooke tape that belonged to dad, and i was suddenly overcome with sadness and started to cry. i saw the beach that we went to after he helped me move to chicago, and i was listening to the music that he loved to dance to, and i just started to miss him so much. i hate that he won't get to dance with me at my wedding. i know it sounds stupid, but i think that his death has not really hit me yet. i think that his death brought back my mom's death so strongly that it distracted me from actually losing him.
yikes, i don't like the idea of another wave of grief just building offshore. i suppose therapy can help me batten down the hatches.

on an even sadder note- is anyone else scared as hell of our supreme court now? sandy, why are you leaving us? who's going to save us from the church? who's going to be our moderate voice of reason? i'm glad i'm still renting; it will make it easier to move to canada when the crazy christians finish conquering our government.

movin' and shakin'

i am moving- again. it has been less than a year since i packed up everything i own and walked it down the block, and i would be immensely happy if it could be at least three more until i did it again. but no such luck. the swell of chicago condos must march on. my place is apparently going for $390k. i mean, this is a nice apartment and all, but seriously- four hundred thousand dollars? when i was growing up in richmond, that kind of money could buy a house with a three acre yard and an elevator. here, just a two bedroom condo rehab. the world's gone mad.

speaking of going mad, apparently i need therapy. or at least, J thinks it's a good idea. i agree, i have been a bit of a mess lately, with mood swings to rival a six flags ride, and bouts of minor depression, oh, and the fact that i'm obsessed with my dead parents. and antisocial behavior- if that's what it means when you're always crabby and you can't make friends. (these are all my words, not his). lately i just feel blank and desperate. i can feel totally alone and isolated sitting in the middle of a crowded room. and- i think this is J's issue- i have been getting my familiar born-to-run feelings again. a few weeks ago, out of nowhere, i drank a whole bottle of wine and decided i was furiously mad at J (who had the NERVE to go out with his friends and then call me several times to tell me where he was and when he would be home, the bastard), so i ran away from home, thirteen-year old style. i went down the street to my old (now my new again) house, and lay down in the back yard and fell asleep, deliberatly hoping that J would be worried when he got home. he was. luckily, he found me right away, and then we had a ridiculous fight, in which i tried to act like i was the one who had been slighted, and told him several times that i had HOPED that he was worried. in the morning, it all came back to me in an oily haze, and i felt like the biggest asshole on the planet. i'm lucky he didn't dump my crazy ass right there. he was very hurt, but also very forgiving, saying that he had panicked when he got home and i wasn't there, and that he didn't know what he would do if he lost me. and the night before i actually told him that this was the reaction i wanted! i've never done something so mean hearted and vindictive, especially to someone that i love who in no way deserved it. it was so clearly just a plea for attention, which he would willingly give me at any time, if i just TELL HIM WHAT I NEED. i have such a hard time asking for what i need, and a nearly impossible time asking for help. when did i become such a passive aggressive coward? and where did all of this anger that i have come from? i love J more than anything in the world; he is so sweet and understanding and good to me. and yet i still find myself questioning our relationship, wondering if this is the right thing for me, so scared of a future that involves counting on one person.

he's right, i do need a therapist. and i'm such a stuck-up hippocrite for being so surprised that that's true. J has worked so hard on himself and this relationship, has made it such a priority to be the man he thinks i deserve, the absolute least he deserves is the same effort from me.

(and synge, don't think i am missing the irony of being told i need to go to therapy. talk about the pot calling the kettle crazy...)

tell me i'm not crazy...

i never thought it would happen to me. i thought i would be safe. i saw it happen to my other friends, read about it in magazines, saw it in the movies and on tv, but i thought i would be different. i thought i was stronger. but it has happened.

i am obsessed with wedding planning. and i've got it bad.

i buy every wedding magazine i can get my hands on, even the ones in the sealed plastic bags with the free budget planner notebooks and the target gift registries. i log on to indiebride or the knot at least twice a day. i can't wait to go to flea markets this summer and look for interesting stuff for centerpieces. recently i even had the urge to rent "my best friend's wedding" and "runaway bride" JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE ABOUT WEDDINGS!!!!

i have a problem. it has to stop. the wedding is still a year away, and i have everything done except for buying the flowers and writing my vows.

i fear i am lost.

tell me i'm not completely out of my mind. tell me this is normal. at least tell me this is normal for ME....

a response to a fellow mourner

Dear Vixanne,

i agree and disagree with you. all grief is indeed very different, and losing a parent is not like losing a child, that's true. but, ironically enough, when i lost my parents, i felt very similar feelings of isolation and exclusion to what you have felt, and much of that came from how other people 'expected' me to grieve. everyone seemed to think that it was so much 'worse' for my grandparents to lose their children than it was for me to lose my mother, because your parents are supposed to die before you and your children aren't. maybe that's true, but your parents aren't supposed to die before you're thirty, and even if they are, it doesn't make it any easier. everyone 'expected' me to be over it by now, because i am young, and resiliant, and i have my whole life and future ahead of me. so now it makes people uncomfortable when i talk about my pain, and it makes them feel guilty when they tell me their mother's day plans, because they don't know how to 'handle' my grief that has lasted so much longer and affected me so much more than it 'should'.

true, your grief and mine are very different, just as our experiences and our personalities are very different. but i think that there are also a lot of similarities which you don't see.

i very much mourned the future when i lost my parents; every day i mourn the fact that they are not with me in my life to see the directions i am taking and that they will never see me grow or know my family or my achievements. i do feel that my mother's death is a reflection of me as a woman and a person- through my most formative adult years, i didn't have a MOTHER, i still don't have a mother, i don't have that most essential of female relationships that every other woman in my world has, and that makes me feel freakish and abnormal and faulty. no one knew knew what to say to me when they died- sure, i got the prerequisite 'i'm sorry' and ' how are you?', but no one really knew what to say, yourself included. just because there's a card for it, doesn't mean people feel comfortable discussing it with you. i do have many many memories of my parents, but they are fading every day, and for many of them, there is no one left who shares those memories; they will die forever when they leave my mind, because all of the people in those memories have died. i certainly felt bitterness and jealousy, and i still feel bitterness, every time i see a mother and daughter or a father and daughter laughing and talking together. it makes me FURIOUS that that can't be me, that my parents were taken from me while other people will have theirs for their whole lives. and lastly, yes, hundreds of people mourned my mother and my father, but i mourned them, and still do mourn them, very much alone, every day. in fact, the further i get from their deaths, the more alone i feel in my grief. because i'm supposed to be over it.

because grief is supposed to be simple.

but you and i both know that it is not.

for anyone.

day by day

i fear i am falling back off the blogging wagon. some days it's easier to write than others. in fact, i have fallen off the writing wagon in general lately, and that's no good. but i have a workshop and a new writing class both coming up soon, so that should help me stay focused. sad that i need such structure to keep me on task, but such is life. i have been distracting myself lately with wedding stuff and finding a new apartment (my building's going condo, so we have to go), and apparently i can't mentally walk and chew gum.

we did find a new place- well actually, an old place. we're moving back into my old building, four doors down the block. in an uncharacteristically shrewd bargaining move, i talked my old landlord into renting us the third floor unit in my former building- the owner's unit, a three bedroom, and the nicest aprtment in the building- for $300/per month less than he was asking. it had been vacant for three months, and i knew that he was desperate, so i thought he might bite- and he did! talk about a renter's market...if anyone wants to rent an apartment for a great deal, move to chicago, now's the time. now i have my old yard back and more space than i know what to do with. J is thinking of turning the back sunroom into a meditation room- just because he can- and we will now have an official guest bedroom, so if any of you east coast slackers ever want to go (mid)west, you have a place to stay. it is a little more money than we pay now, but not a ridiculous amount, and i figure if you're going to splurge it might as well be on your home. i know all of you homeowners out there are going to tell me i should buy, but i'm just not ready yet (nor is the chicago housing market, by my budget). one major life commitment at a time- talk to me after i'm married and through grad school.

i am just a little worried about J's reaction to the new place though. he seems a little weirded out about moving back into what was essentially my old apartment, in a building with all of my friends. he says he feels like he's moving further into my life, and that strikes me as an odd phrase from someone who is planning to marry me in a year. as i see it, i spend a LOT of time with his friends, much more than he has ever spent with mine, so in fact moving in there kind of balances the scales. i know that the extra money worries him too, but as i see it, we have the money my parents left me as a cushion for us and in order to enable us to live a little more comfortably, so why not use it to live in a really nice place? it's really only $150 more a month than we were looking to spend, and that's what, like two dinner dates or a couple of cab rides a month we'll have to cut out? i do not count on my parent's money, and i have never squandered it, but dammit, my parents are dead and that really sucks, so why shouldn't i get some happiness from the money they left me? i have so much guilt and so many bad feelings about that money, i am trying to get to a place where i can just enjoy it- not waste it or depend on it, but enjoy it and appreciate the security and flexibility it offers me. using it to enable me to live in an apartment that i love, in a building full of people that i care about, with a yard where i can dig in the dirt- that is how i lose the bad vibes of that money. and that's okay........right?

damn. i need to go back to therapy.

is anybody out there?

or am i writing this for an entirely empty room? lurkers, unmask yourself (if you exist)- i'm feeling neglected here...

stop the world, i wanna get off

right after my mom died, my dad gave me a book called 'when bad things happen to good people'. i never read it. when my dad died i looked at the book and thought it was ironic that he was the one who had given me the book and now he was 'good person' i was missing. when my mom died another friend of mine gave me a book called 'motherless daughters' which i also did not read for a while, though i eventually stop/start-ed my way through most of it (the crying made it hard to read, hence all the stopping). this summer i will attend a writing workshop in iowa city led by the woman who wrote 'motherless daughters', hope edelman; the workshop is called 'writing about family'. yesterday one of my closest friends told me that she had some irregular, possibly pre-cancerous cells on her cervix, and would have to go in for minor surgery and, if that didn't work, she might have to have a hysterectomy. this morning i broke down crying on my way to the gym, overcome with a terrible sadness, suddenly absolutely exhausted by the world. i am tired of trying to fix everything. i am so tired. i am tired of bad things happening to good people. i am tired of worrying that more people i love might die. i am tired of putting forth a brave face, and being positive, and supporting everyone else, and taking care of everything. i want someone to take care of me. i want someone to make everything okay. i just want to stop and be happy for a while.

i want my mommy.

digging for roots

today i spent the entire afternoon on my hands and knees in the dirt planting my vegetable garden. the weather was hot and the work was strenuous, but there are few things in the world that i love more than sitting in the sun wiggling my toes into the dirt, so overall it was a wonderful afternoon. i finished the day dirty, tired and amazingly satisfied.

crouching there, placing each tiny little plant into the earth, i thought of my mother. when i was growing up, every single saturday morning i can remember found my mom in our back yard, on her knees, messing with her flowers. i would wake up, usually hours after she had, to a pan of bicuits on the kitchen counter, a pitcher of sweet tea on the back stoop and mom, dressed in an old sweatshirt and cutoff jeans with a bandana holding back her hair, half covered by plants somewhere in the yard. she loved her garden, it was her haven. she told me once that that was her release after a long and emotional draining work week, the only time she could really call her own. though at the time i didn't understand how working could be a release from working, now i understand. just the sensation, the satisfaction of doing a job that you want to do, on your own time, in your own way, and for only your own reward, is an amazingly calming thing. gardening makes me happy in a way that few other 'hobbies' can; part of that is the activity itself and part of that is the nostalgia and sense of private indulgence i associate it with.

as i realized how much i share my mother's love of gardening i was faced with the fact that i am like her, and unlike my teenage years, when that would have terrified me, i found that idea very comforting. maybe it's because my parents are gone, but now i'm pleased when i notice their traits in my own actions. it makes me feel closer to them, it reminds me that they were a part of my life and they will always be a part of me. when i catch myself making up silly songs, i remember that i am like my dad. i catch myself making facial expressions that remind me of my mom. i hear the tone of my voice and it sounds like dad. i share both their good traits (curiousity, generosity, friendliness) and their bad ones (arrogance, impatience, lateness), but the important thing is that i am LIKE them, they are still in me. i am their daughter, here or gone, and no amount of time or distance will change that. they are my roots, they are my foundation. though i am my own plant now, producing my own fruit, it is my parents who first helped me grow. to grab for another plant metaphor, i guess the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree.

wow. all of this, found in an eight by four plot of dirt. who'd of thunk it.

these boobs are made for walkin' (but DAMN, my feet hurt!)

this weekend i participated in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer (not 'against' breast cancer, 'for' it-?!?) and my body is now in complete revolt (well, that, and the tequila-soaked congratulations dinner i ate last night didn't help much either). it felt good to finish though, and though it may not sound like much, i must say that walking 40 miles is HARD! it was primarily through the city, and yesterday was steam-heat hot, so that added to the discomfort level. but it was all worth it when people along the route cheered us on, and when cancer survivors thanked us for walking- it's the least i can do to fight a disease which has taken the lives of my dearest loved ones. so many of the teams were walking in honor of someone they had lost, and it really hit home for me how very common this disease has become. there were all sorts of signs along the way reminding us that one in seven women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime, and those are some scary odds. it also reminded me, on a much more selfish and superficial level, how hard it is to stay in shape, and how much i need to keep up regular exercise. i consider myself in pretty good shape, i go to the gym at least four or five times a week and i try to eat well, but MAN, my body was pushed to the limit this weekend, and i was only walking! i have told myself that some day before i die, i want to run a marathon (in honor of my dad, who was planning to run one when he turned 60), but i don't know how i will get into that kind of shape. if walking a marathon nearly killed me, how could i possibly manage to run one? but i have time, and exercise is a habit i am trying hard to form, so maybe one day...

i did think a lot about my mom and dad this weekend. along the route there were lots of families out, holding up signs to support their loved ones who were walking, and it made me wish that my mom and dad were there to cheer me on. they both would have been so proud and supportive of me for doing this ( and doing it 2 years in a row now); my dad in particular would have been really impressed. most of my family didn't even donate, let alone call me up to cheer me on (except my stepmother M, who totally rocks). i guess this is just another incident in which i have to consider my friends as my family, because all of my friends were so very encouraging and generous in their donations. i also thought of my mom as i saw so many mothers and daughters walking together and once again i wished that she were here so that we could do the walk together. i wish so much that i could walk and celebrate with my mother the cancer 'survivor', instead of desperately missing my mother the cancer 'victim'.

recently i heard on the news somewhere that they may have found a cure for cervical cancer, the disease that killed my mom. some doctor said that now no woman should ever have to die from cervical cancer. i have such mixed feelings about this news. while i am happy that no other women will lose their lives, i feel so angry that this should arrive too late for my mom. she fought so hard, and so valiantly, and to hear that the disease that beat her is now not even a threat makes me absolutely furious at the unfairness of her death. too little too late seems like the biggest understatement of all time.

so if i can walk, and raise money to help find a cure so that generations of other daughters will not have to feel the anger and the sadness of losing their mothers, so that even one woman will not have to feel the pain and frustration that i feel every day, then give me my damn shoes, i'll walk it again right now. it would be worth it.

Dreams

i woke up this morning from a night full of dreaming, and the dreams were so close to the surface and clear in my mind that i felt i must write them down. the first one i remember was more fantastic and indulgent than significant- i dreamed of an elevator bar. i was in a big fancy hotel with two other people ( a man and a woman, i'm not sure who) and i wanted to show them an elevator i had found that somehow served cocktails. i went to the elevator bank, pressed the button, and the door opened on a long, steel gray metal room with an older, salt-and-pepper haired black man in a tuxedo standing behind a beautifully laid out table. the table was dressed in perfect white linens, set with bottles of liqour and wine, a silver ice bucket and several kinds of glasses. there were three black stools pulled up to the "bar" and when i explained that we were only here to get a drink and return to our rooms, he shook his head and told us we should come in and sit down. we did. he poured us drinks (once again, i don't remember what) and then began to produce (from nowhere) small plates of the most extravagant food- a mound of caviar with small round toast points and sour cream, a hunk of very nice french cheese, chocolate mousse, raspberry trifle, and minature lobster rolls. we began to eat and drink, and i had the distinct feeling that the room was moving, in fact i could see it rotating so that the elevator door was pointing away from the outside lobby- so that no one else could get in. i wasn't afraid, it seemed to make sense to me, to close the bar off. the older gentleman bartender explained that this was a very exclusive bar and that not many people knew about it. he told us that he had many regular clients, and that they all had their normal visiting hours- one man always came by with a friend or two at 1am- and that this was good, since the bar only held four people and if it was full when you arrived, you would open the door to find only the back of the elevator car and you would not be able to get in. all the while i was eating this amazing food, going for the caviar first, since i knew it must be good caviar and i have never eaten good caviar. i picked upa toast point (well, a toast circle, really) and noticed it was soft and flexible, not crisp as i had thought it would be. the man across from me ( i'm still not sure who it was) had folded his toast point into a kind of caviar taco, and i remember thinking that seemed odd and very decadent. i loaded my taost with caviar, put some sour cream on, and then ate it, but do not remember how it tasted. in fact i remember thinking it did not have much taste, not as much as i had expected. the man acrosss the table from me ( i almost want to say he was like a young tony randall) noticed a crock topped with white whipped cream and dug in to discover it was raspberry trifle. we both commented on trifle and then dug in. that had lots of flavor, very sweet and light and fluffy, sugary and rich. after that things began to fade. i remember being away from the table for a moment and turning back to find that the food had disappeared, except for a crock of chocolate mousse and a small bowl of cocoa powder. our drinks were still there, and the linen was spotless, as if nothing had ever been there or been removed. i remember thinking that i had never gotten to try the cheese.
the second dream was much more significant, but i'm not sure where it came from. i was sitting in a small room, like a screened in porch type of area, with most of my mother's family- her sisters, nieces, nephews and her mother. we were all sitting there talking and clearly waiting for something or someone, and i eventually got the impression that we were waiting for my mother in some way, though i'm not sure why. as we waited, my aunts and my oldest cousin, dawn, were talking about my mom and they were saying all kinds of bitchy things, like how she would put on airs, that she thought she was better than everyone else, that she was really irresponsible, that she was just as much of a good time girl as everyone else but she pretended to be so good, that she was always running late and making people wait for her. i got more and more angry as they talked, and yet i didn't say anything, until finally dawn was saying something in a particularly sneering tone and i broke down and told them all that they shouldn't talk about her like that, how dare they, she was my mother. they all gave me a look and were quiet, then slowly drifted back into their conversations. i remember catching my aunt katy's eyes and she looked so sorry for me, so pitying, and i felt like she was the only one who understood. that's all i remember of that one, but i woke up wanting to talk to my mom and talk to my aunts.

there's the dream report. discuss amongst yourselves.

only thirteen months to go!

i must confess, i am beginning to get a little wedding-happy. i know it only springs from too much free time between classes and my upcoming visit to MD to start talking to vendors, but i fear i am becoming somewhat obsessed. and i still have a year to go. yikes.

i was in NYC recently to visit synge, and we went to try on wedding dresses. i have come up with the brilliant money-saving idea that i will buy a bridesmaid's dress for myself instead of a wedding gown because they are cheaper, simpler and more in keeping with the style that i'm looking for (and most of them can be ordered in ivory- suckers!). so we went to vera wang maids, and tried on two absolutley beautiful dresses. but right before we got to VW, i was looking at a dress in a window on madison avenue, and it suddenly hit me that i am actually going to buy MY WEDDING DRESS, and i kind of freaked out for a moment. i have been so caught up in planning the wedding (ie: the party), that i have not really thought about the marriage (ie: the point). this is actually the second time i have gotten chilly feet since the engagement (in december), and i still have a year to go. once again: yikes.

so i am officially admitting that in my return to blogging i am going to start writing about my wedding journey. my everyday friends are already starting to get tired of me talking about wedding stuff, so i will use this as a guilt-free outlet for all of my obsessing and worrying (and, oh yeah, joyous excitement, blah, blah, blah). i feel better already. not to say that i will never talk about anything else, but it is nice to know i have this as an option. there will be discussions of "together forever?!" fears, and "i want my parents" moaning, and "what do you think of ___ as a centerpiece?", as well as the usual general life insecurities, self-pitying and doubts that i have already displayed on this page.

buyer beware, i'm on the bridal path now! read at your own risk....