posters

i bought myself some nice posters when my student loans came through this semester. y'know, grown-up art-type posters, the kind that have to be framed. i picked them up from the framer today, and they are lovely. (seriously, you should check this guy out.) but as i looked at them, i realized that for as mysterious and circumspect as i think i am, i am about as opaque as glass.

the pictures i chose all have themes. "teach me something." "how long can we do this?" and the most transparent of all: "she loves him more than anybody. i don't think he cares." could the connections to the other boy be more obvious? it's a good thing for me that the ball and chain has no sense of how deep my disaffection runs. (he would also never dream that i could ever be as evil as i actually am in the parameters of our relationship, so that helps.)

i try so hard to be discreet. i try to be aloof. hell, there's a reason why everyone's identities are so couched around here. but at the end of the day, i am who i am, and i'm a woman who wears her heart on her sleeve. it's funny; part of my affinity with the other boy is my admiration for the way he handles his emotional life. he is always in control, always on top of things. he handles his business, one foot in front of the other, no matter what's going on inside. he doesn't feel the need to talk about it. ever. (in fact, he will actively avoid these conversations - it's only our long history, and my persistence, that has led to the maybe ten times he's shared deep emotional stuff with me.) i wish i could be even a tiny bit like that. but my emotions spill over the sides and splash everywhere. i am an open book, right down to the posters on my wall.

makes living a double life a dangerous proposition indeed...

suffer the children

over the last two years in particular, i've noticed a certain feeling that comes over me when i'm being tested. the physical sensation that comes over me is much like a wall going up around my heart. the thought that crosses my mind is, "why the hell should i be put through such agony?" i have never understood why people take all the lumps of life without pushing against them. do people expect misery as a part of life?

and lo, here came this blog post. the myth of redemptive suffering. i've beaten this horse a time or two already on this blog. i have always chalked a lot of our society's problems in general to this idea that misery is necessary to reach some kind of higher achievement in this life (and the next). for so many reasons, i don't go for that idea.

one of the quotes that hit me where i live is, "atheists have only their own, ongoing concept of decent behavior to get them through the hard times: suffering need have no cosmic meaning for a decent person to know that the only proper moral response is to try to ease the pain. ... our only ethical injunction is to cause as little suffering as possible and to try to alleviate it when and where we find it." so true, and i'm so good at that... except when it comes to my personal life.

suffering. yeah, that's pretty much where i am all the time. i work hard to keep the facade up, but it hurts. it hurts to be stuck. it hurts to hurt him. it hurts to not be able to do what i want. i don't understand this, and i know there's nothing i can do. but it's not noble, it's not good, and "my reward is not in the next world." the hurt i'm going through, temporary though (i hope to all things on this earth) it is, will not gain me anything. and yet here it is. suffering makes NO SENSE. but it's part of life. all i can do is persevere.

les bon temps

thank the gods for mardi gras. that's all i have to say about it. this year, instead of struggling through a second awkward, difficult valentine's day with the ball and chain, i get to spend the day in new orleans with a group of people, drinking champagne and catching plastic trinkets thrown from floats. nice distraction, if you can get it.

i never really got into the whole valentine's day thing, except in the beginning of new relationships. the only valentine's days i've enjoyed have been so much more about "look at my new boyfriend" than about the boy in question. i mean, in eleventh grade, it was the best valentine's day ever: i got to kiss my shiny new boy at a concert in front of all our friends. gloating much? oh yeah. but in twelfth grade, long after that boy and i parted ways, it was dinner at a chain restaurant with an old friend, commiserating over twisted lime-a-licious chicken or whatever. VASTLY different.

with the ball and chain, it's been an up-and-down situation. we've never had what i'd call that "perfect" experience. there have always been... complications. there was the year we were apart, when i had to work that night and we didn't get to talk. there was our first year of marriage, when he and i were both out of work in a $1,000 a month apartment. there was the year he chose to spend the night playing video games instead of going out with me. (that one, i discovered later, was THE talk of my circle of friends. no one said anything to me, mind you. but that's another rant for another day.)

ironically, last valentine's day would've been pretty much perfect, were it not for the severe complications in our relationship. we had a really good dinner, a round of drinks, and saw a great movie. i was also drunk enough to get through the marital-congress duty at the end of the night without weirdness. but the ambivalence in my heart was - and is - too much for me.

this day, thankfully, will be nice and free of distractions. it'll be good to ignore the slice through my soul that is being stuck with the ball and chain for another year. i seriously thought that this would all be done by now. heh. what did i know? one foot in front of the other. one day at a time. heh. laissez les bon temps rouler. please.

singularly productive

it's funny how being alone instantly reintroduces me to my ambition to get things done. when the ball and chain is here, i don't do chores until the messiness or lack of clean clothes reaches critical mass. tonight, on the other hand, i have been a juggernaut of important household tasks. i used to get so much done when i was a kid and lived alone. i wrote, i drew, i did all manner of things that mattered to me. when i got into this relationship, though, it became all about spending big, empty chunks of quantity time with him. ugh. so retrograde of me.

getting so much done tonight makes me that much hungrier for the time when this is my life all the time. i cannot wait. it'll be so nice to get back to the way i used to be before all of this. the balance of things will be restored at last.

the other boy

i began five days of blissful alone-ness today. the ball and chain is on a vacation far away, leaving me in the house with nothing to do but contemplate what my life would be like if this was my reality. it's not a perfect situation; i'm in charge of the dog he made us get when we came down here, and that dog's already eaten a tube of burt's bees lip balm and one (thankfully cheap) dress shoe. but even with that little wrinkle, this is a nice place to be.

even better, come friday, i get to go back to the place i call home. though i live in the southeast for school, home is the mid-atlantic, and i get to step into the other life i lead. by the time i get to the airport, for a little window of time, i get to forget the ball and chain and fall comfortably back into my old pattern with the other boy.

yeah, that's right: the other boy. a girl's gotta have some diversion in this life, and he's mine. how this happened is a long, drawn-out story, but for the last year-plus, i've been deep into some extracurricular activity with this guy. he's been a part of my life since we were teenagers. i was secretly in love with him for years, but it never came to pass. but through a long series of twists and turns, we ended up sharing a hotel room over a new year's weekend. a long talk alone in the dark, both of us vulnerable and lonely, and that, as they say, is that. i never had a chance. neither did he.

you'd think i'd feel guilty about this. nope. i feel ENTITLED to this. i sacrifice so much in my daily life to keep the ball and chain happy. the other boy is my reward for this. the other boy expects nothing from me except the occasional trip to the sack. he spends as much time with me as i request, gives me everything i want, and cares unconditionally. now, it's not like this relationship isn't riddled with complexity (at least from my perspective); it certainly is. but at its heart, this is so easy. it's so nice to spend time with a full-grown man.

i take my share of responsibility for the disintegration of my relationship with the ball and chain. i helped create the monster i'm stuck with now with the way i subsumed everything to him. but i will NOT live the puritan way of suffering through the mistakes i've made. i'm going to be proactive and do something about it. until i can get free, and there's still some time left on the calendar before the inevitable dissolution, i will not deprive myself of what i want. i'm just not that kind of girl.

the rest of the world can live by some antiquated standard of sacrifice. i choose to fulfill myself. after all, loyalty to self alone is the purest kind of loyalty. i will never let myself down again.

i didn't take you to raise

there's a song out there, a minor hit in the mid-90s, "sometimes love just ain't enough." i'm starting to think that there was some kind of prescience in how much i loved it at the time, because by god, it's the story of my life.

teenagers make stupid decisions about as often as they breathe. we all know this. i made my share, your share and that other guy's share of them myself. but one that i was fiercely proud of was the loyalty i showed to my boyfriend. i took up with him as a seventeen-year-old freshman in undergrad. met him day one, started dating day three, and that was that. we were engaged by senior year and married the summer after graduation. in the interim, i transferred colleges - TWICE - in an attempt to stay as close to him as possible. i moved heaven and earth for this relationship, and i thought that my hard work and sacrifice would pay off. in some respects, it has. he's a good-hearted guy, tons of fun, and a lot of laughs. but to paraphrase matthew mcconaughey in dazed and confused, i've gotten older and he has stayed the same age. the back-breaking work i put into this relationship has turned into a habit. his life is so easy, and i carry the burden.

even breaks from him involve more work than should be necessary when dealing with a thirty-year-old. essentially, i am the mother in this relationship. the friend he's going to go visit in the morning said, "i envision her packing your lunch and pinning your itinerary to your jacket with your mittens." ha, ha - big laugh all around. really funny line... if it wasn't the truth. i guess it's the fact that i'm so focused on being a grown woman these days, but i am just not willing to be the mama anymore. he's got a mama. (more on that tangled web later.)

this situation makes me angry. it makes me rebellious. it makes me act out in obvious and bad ways. (more on THAT later, too.) if i wasn't a student, which means i'm broke, i'd walk out the door tomorrow. i am not interested in being the rock that someone relies on in that way. i'm much more interested in taking care of myself. some people think that's selfish. i think that you can't possibly live this life in the old puritanical selflessness model, where everyone else's needs take priority over your own. i don't like myself when i'm resentful, and i'm resentful almost all the time. the only time i'm truly happy is when i'm not with him. this is NOT a good thing.

baby, sometimes love just ain't enough.