Backed up brain

I can't find my paper journal, and it's wearing at me.  I like the flowing of my pen to express my innermost  feelings rather than the computer sometimes.  I fucking type for a living, you know?  It gets a little much to type for joy, as well.  Plus, sometimes I don't have access to my computer.

Well, that's not totally true anymore.  Uriah had a Macbook he wasn't using and traded me for my busted battery, so now I have a real laptop!  SO freaking grateful.  I still haven't fully utilized that, although the other day, I was at the PCC campus on 82nd Ave with my good friend and it was strange to be able to just sit down wherever I wanted and not have to research where the power outlets were first.  I was so used to that that I nearly had forgotten what it was like to not have to do so.

Hanging out with this friend made me realize: I only want to date sex positive people from now on!

The non-sex-positive viewpoint seems to look at the female body as some sort of commodity to be traded, bartered, or sold.  If I look at it that way, I am doing a terrible job with it all, since I am so sexy and can hold a fucking conversation, too, but for some reason since I've been in Portland I've dated two men who had no money at all.  Both of them did pay for things for me and spend time with me, though.   I am sure I mis-heard it, but I thought Uriah called me a 'cheap slut' the other day and it made me all sad.  Despite that and then the conversation with my friend, I have decided that remaining sex-positive is the way to go.  I may be viewed the wrong way in some circles for not insisting on only having sex with people I absolutely love and who spend a lot of money on me, but viewing my sex as some sort of property or bartering tool for love and money is far worse in my mind.

That way of thinking seems completely backward to me: Love should be freely and unconditionally given, and sexual connections allowed to be explored.

First world problems.  But, it doesn't make them any less of problems, just that there should be some perspective on your life rather than getting caught up in it.

Amariah was one who was far removed from reality.  He is so far removed that he actually denies it.  The man has a first generation iPod as well as every other generation of iPod, and a fucking first-generation Kindle, too.  He's a PhD student for crying out loud.  Complaining about your life when you have higher education to that level is so far gone.  You're poor and over-worked by your own life choices, no one made you do it.  Get over yourself.  ANYWAY, though, I still love Amariah and hope he is well.  I carry a candle in my heart for him lest he come out as being bisexual one day and will have a triad relationship with me and perhaps Ezekiel at some point.  Also, that he starts being passionately in love with me and ceases to stop himself short.  (**SNORTS**)

Ezekiel I still love, but also, I have come to terms with, that train has sailed.  Never again.  He claims that he will see me again but at this point even if he comes to me from Vermont with a PhD on a white horse, I still would not get back with him.  He replaced me with a 20-year old, and he would do it again.  Everything I said about him in my journal while I was dating him (and I really went off, since he is such a little shit) is true.  Bitch can have him.

It was nice over the weekend, although then it got to be gray yesterday with maybe a bit of a sun break, and now it is back to raining buckets.  Fucking Abel is making me clean my stuff and put more of it in storage.  This was sort of why I was getting mad about living with the parents.  I always feel like Abel is out to marginalize me in some way and sees me as some sort of obstacle to stealing all of my mom's money.

Whatever, though.  So far, this week of being here has been far better than it would have been at Elijah's house.  I am glad things worked out the way they did so that I could get this job, since it feels like the beginning of something huge and no matter what, a giant leap forward.

I miss Elijah, but as of tomorrow I have not laid eyes him for a week and there is no drama with him the way there was before.  He's off whoring about, being sex-positive and doing absolutely nothing else with his life.  I would have thought having a steady, polyamorous partner would have made him feel calm and rooted enough to start seeking his dreams, but I think fucking everything IS his only dream.  Alas.  The hurt about him will die down and I will once again be glad that we are not together.

OK, time to fucking clean.  I have a lot of work to do today.

Good Week with a Grain of Melancholia

Although it's only Tuesday, already great things are happening.

A friend referred me for a contract writing job with a local firm, although I met with the boss today and it went so well that I was offered a staff position!!  So much for my travel plans, but getting a staff position has been my dream even more than that.  My future boss was so impressed with how much I knew and how many work samples I have, and it felt so amazing to finally be validated for all the knowledge and experience that I have been gaining by constantly writing freelance for low pay.  It really is valuable!  Hallelujah.

After biking home, I found an email from the freelance job I currently work telling me I got a credited job writing an E-book.

Things are coming together.  But I still have knots in my stomach.

I'm a beautiful and amazing person, not the awful bitch Elijah made me out to be in front of everyone.  He made it sound as though I was some terrible, lost soul who would never make it in life.

I deserve to be missed.  I'm glad he's happier without me, but it makes me feel bad, too, that he doesn't miss me.  It feels as though I just lose.  I guess it's a chance you always take on love... Losing it, that is.

Sad and anxious

Despite everything, I have decided I need to give up on Elijah.  Like what I think happened with Jezebel before me, he just gets into a mode where he is mad at me for no reason and everything is my fault.  I am too awesome and interesting of a person to be crippled by this treatment.  He tells me it is all because I hate myself that he acts this way toward me and actually believes that he is just living his life and I am ruining everything by not taking it.

Unfortunately for Elijah, I have gone through too much in my life.  I have fought for and lost many people who treated me better and who I loved a lot more than him, including Bojangles, Amariah, Ezekiel, Jett (may he rest in peace), and even Diva, my beautiful cat who ran away.  I lost my PhD, my MS, thousands of dollars, and most of my worldly possessions to Vermont, in addition to losing two lovers, my car, my apartment, my job, my beloved cat, and my dad (I know you're up there with Buddha, Datty) while there.  I feel like I have been devastated and born anew many times already.  I ponder many times how it is that I possibly find reasons to be happy on any given day, yet most of the time these days, I do.

I love myself.  Unfortunately for Elijah, I don't hate myself enough to want to be in this situation with him anymore.

I have goals in my life that I have finally made for myself.  I want to be a writer (check!) and I want to travel the world.  Making this transition to leave Portland is tough for me, but it is what I have always wanted.  I am sad about it but also happy at the same time.  Sad as in, I feel some level of pain at leaving Portland behind as of now.  Growing pains, you might call them.

It was comfortable to love Elijah and to be with him, until he made it so that it wasn't.  I am not the leaving kind and probably could have worked with him for a while if he weren't screaming at me to the point that I burst into tears.  He was being no sort of friend, either.  One of the things that alarmed me was his refusal to pick me up one night even though I promised him money for gas and he was doing nothing besides playing video games at home.  Yes, I had agreed to ride the bike, but that was before it got late on a Friday night.  He could have come over to hang out and have with Hannah and her husband and I, but he said he is bored hanging out with my friends because he can't have sex with any of them.

Details, though.  It confirms a lot of what I already knew about him from my own experience and from stories about his past.

When everything hit the fan with the triad, it was clear Jezebel complained about him all the time and those complaints were valid, but in reality just wanted to be with him anyway so I thought that it was more bitterness in the end more than anything else.  The triad was that she wanted Elijah, E wanted me, and I wanted her but she's not bi and/or just wanted him.  I see that now.  So of course it destructed for the three of us to have a relationship and it sort of still comes down to the three of us each still pining after the one that does not want us back.  Also, it is true about Elijah's abusiveness and I can't imagine why, since that is true, Jezebel has taken so much of it.  It isn't my life though, I have to remember that.  For my part, I thought it would be worth a shot to try being with Elijah without that strange triad  dynamic since he seems to love me so much.  I am sure that he does love me, but he doesn't know how to treat a lover, and I am quite sure that once I am gone he will be moved on and, as I always say, he will just have a new person with a new life story to memorize for a few months and then forget about when they go away.  He can get through a lot of people in his life that way, and I think that is the kind of poly that will make him happy.

Peace to him, then.  I guess I still believe in love, but it once again did not pan out.  I really do love Elijah, so that made it hard to leave.  After all this shit, I would have thought I would never love again.  I'm not even swearing off of it anymore.  Actually, I am embracing it.  There is a major part of me that is in love with life right now and feeling so free at being able to go forth in the world with my head up high and float among the continents and countries and beautiful cities old and new.

I have grown so much from knowing Elijah.  In an amazing way that I will never forget.  But at the same time, I am not responsible for his floundering life, and if every single person I know is telling me I can and SHOULD do better, that is a major red flag.  I hate that I could not make him want to be better and I hate that he can't see the potential that I saw in him.  I loved him for who he was and was not so quick to write him off as a "loser" as most people I know are.  At the same time, I can't take on his problems and I am not responsible for his life.  If he feels it's all my fault, I think the best thing I can do as a person who really loves him is to leave him in his mess of a life and let him continue to try and blame other people until he realizes it's too late or, Heaven forbid, he actually comes to take responsibility at some point.  Either way, it's hard for me, but I'll be long gone.

Just writing this little venting makes it all feel a bit better.  I am soothed by some tea at the old coffee shop on Woodstock that I used to sit at with my dad years ago.  Hannah and I used to go here, too.  I came here in 7th grade sometimes as a break from the public library.

People come to Portland seeking something and usually leave after to go back wherever it was they came from.  I am lucky that Portland is my beautiful home and I will always have this to come back to.  Already since I left eleven years ago, I have come back a few times and it has been great every time.

Someday I will be back for good.

Quote of the week

Elijah (in baby voice as I am getting out of bed in the trailer and getting dressed to go to yoga one day): "Ooh, you are so bu-tiful, I looove you!!  I kiss your vagina from afar."

Me: Swoons for the next few weeks

Friday the 13th

Been feeling blue all morning, despite the sunshine.  I was thinking as I walked back from yoga this a.m. (a 75-min version of Bikram this time– thank God), that ppl keep asking me and I keep wondering exactly what I am doing living in a trailer/ room in a sexual healing center with 6 other ppl.

The answer was, I don't know.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize this is the best offer I had going at the time, and I was very reluctant to take it.

I keep telling myself that this is temporary.  Even last night I felt strangely as I had to stay downstairs while Elijah had a 3-sum w some ppl I had no interest in.  Yet after yoga this morning, he wanted to clean and put all my things away and hang all my clothes up and move another car load from Zeruah's house.  It seems so horribly... permanent.

And moving out of somewhere always leaves me with that "unfinished business" feeling.

I hate moving.

...?

Did you ever really, really want to tell someone you love them, but you can't because you were an idiot like 9 months ago after having your heart crushed and stomped on by someone else, so you thought you were actually just going to be friends that sometimes have sex with each other even though you've really had feelings for the person from Day Zero?

I think this is actually kind of a common scenario.  This knowledge is in NO WAY assuaging the situation.

F M L

Blerg

Spoke too soon about doing completely well.  I have a headache that feels like my brain is beating up against my skull, and I still have a lot more writing to do for work, including an article about the stock market and the potential for long-term holding of biotech futures.  Blerg.  The lit was right, though, since instead of caffeine, all I want to do is reach for something sugary or carb-rich for a little pick-me-up.  Bad mistake.  Also I am super tired, and already took a nap/ long sex break in the middle of the day.

Some people would mock the fact that I'm at home all day working while my boyfriend plays video games and watches TV/browses the internet while intermittently running errands or doing work, talking to me about stuff whenever, and taking breaks to pontificate with me or discussing plans or issues or making food and of course lots of sex.  Heck, that's what he's doing next to me right now (the video games and TV part).  Nonetheless, I stay up as long as it takes to get my work done and have struggled through a lot of shitty work setbacks on top of low-paying writing jobs just to get by sometimes.  So if I am OK with accepting this and working my ass off on being a writer because it's what I want to do and at the same time I might as well reap the rewards of getting to fuck the caffeine detox pain away. ;-)

Day 3

This is the third day of the dreaded caffeine detox.  Actually, caffeine's just the most prominent part of the detox, which also includes alcohol, sugar, and refined carbs, and real cigarettes (not e cigs, at this time).  It would be a mistake to say that any of these were easy to go without, but I kept reading that a caffeine detox needs to include these other components to truly be effective in breaking the addiction/habit.  So, yesterday sucked and I am surprised that I was able to pull off getting anything done at all, to be honest.

I started this morning with yoga, hot ashtanga flow, at a place very close to here.  It was AMAZING.  I always have relied on Bikram when going through a detox because I think sweating out toxins is a huge help.  Although this studio does not seem to have actual Bikram (unfortunately), the price is right so there it is.  I'm lucky enough to have a minuscule amount of money coming in so that I can even afford to go... What a luxury to go to yoga, I now realize, after having to go without for 3 months.

Sunday was great, minus the fact that I had my first legitimate breakdown since I moved to Portland.  I think it was something to do with extreme sleep deprivation, drinking tequila until 6 a.m. while playing the Battlestar Galactica board game, and PMSing, as well as it being Easter without my dad and my having had recurring dreams about him.  Although it seems like it, the drinking was not out of control; certainly not on the level that I had to do a detox the way Uriah did.

[Uriah... Long and difficult subject.  I miss him and will miss him more when he is gone for 6 months.  I need to disappear into him for at least a week straight before he goes.  More on this later, though.]


Anyway, I freaked out and cried and cried about being fat and losing everything in Vermont and about my dad being gone and about not having anything good to show for my life and about losing my friends because of being who I am and about Ezekiel and about Amariah.  I cried it all out.

I got to Eve's house Sunday afternoon and went through some of Dad's notebooks.  Sole was there but is still acting strangely toward me.  Oh well.  I think she is much more money-oriented than I am, I have always been motivated by different things.  I also think she harbors much more awkwardness about our upbringing and wishes to move away from it, whereas I have always embraced it.  I think things will be okay in the end.

After that I had a good time with Abel and Eve, and then went to Alvan's house with Elijah.  Alvan, as it so happens, is an amazing chef, and I like him and his friends a lot.  He told us he really liked us and that we challenged him and others in good ways, and that people say good things about Elijah and I.  I thought that was sweet and was honored by it.  E and I get it from people all the time that we are great together; and this is from people that know us as a couple.  I'm definitely sad that Sole got such a bad impression, but I think that it will dissipate in time because I am quite spectacularly happy and content.

Some other highlights: I live here officially now, which means I have to at some point get my things out of my old place with Zeruah.  E and I had a four-sum with another couple we met at a club and then the next day a three-way with our friend Evi.  We both like her a lot but I don't know if it will be anything more than playing, and I think she's only experimentally bi.  I miss being in a triad, though.

Somehow so much has happened in my life and yet I still find myself happy and joyful almost every day.

Things I Learned By Being a Writer

I have to write a lot of articles for blogs and such, as well as reviews.  I write for an audience.  And sometimes that audience is a second-person audience (meaning, I'm talking to YOU), and in writing to you I realize that I make all sorts of assumptions about who you are based on what the client wants or needs.  This is regardless of whether I feel that said assumptions are either true, fair, or real.  For instance, you are:

• An emotional buyer.  I'm not kidding when I say that I had to write about key emotions that businesses can use to make people want to buy something that they do not need.  In this case, you are the business owner and want to use photography to exploit people's emotions so that they buy your product.  But let me tell you this: The one real emotion that makes people buy is fear.  So go ahead and exploit people's fears of loneliness, abandonment, and isolation.  After all,  the fears are driven by society so that you do keep buying, and as long as you have that fear you can be sold anything.
• A homeowner or aspiring homeowner.  If you don't already own a home, there are steps you can take to do well with the Man so that he will give you credit to buy a home that you clearly cannot afford outside of 30 years of payments.  If you own a home, of course, you are trying to renovate it so that in many years when you pay off the home it will no longer be underwater.  If you are like me and wish for a yurt or a cabin in the forest, clearly you're to be written off.
• In a monogamous relationship or wishing you were.  If you don't have the loving spouse who would never 'stray', you are by definition unhappy.  Get on a dating website or try out the dating 'feelers' with anyone you meet who you think might be a possibility, otherwise you are destined to die alone.  Never mind if you are enjoying the single life or focusing on your career right now– you are unhappy too, and you must at least secretly wish you had a monogamous partner.  If you're like me and polyamorous and/or want a loving community with children running around that may or may not have been made by your own body, you're just a freak and no one cares about you in so-called 'real life'.  These are just communities of perverts and sexual deviants.  Chances are, you only do this because monogamy didn't work out for you, you can't keep a partner, and/or you can't get your act together to just commit to someone, which means you are too flaky for the real world anyway and no one of consequence actually likes you.
• Wishing you were more beautiful.  You wish you were taller, thinner, more fit, and with a face like George Clooney or Angelina Jolie.  If you're like me and not a size 0, you probably think you're ugly as hell.  Never mind you if, like me, you dance, do yoga, write for a living from home or a coffee shop, wander the city, play board games, have sex several times a day, cook wonderful vegan food with and look absolutely radiant at size 4: Those 10-15 pounds could come off and you know it.  Join a gym, quit eating anything besides popcorn and salad, chain smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol to get rid of your hunger, chew gum, drink coffee, and abuse prescription drugs– and get really, really sad.  That helped me lose the weight!  Being miserable definitely kicks your ass into gear, so find a reason to be unhappy and STAT.  A nice car, condo by the lake, fancy higher-ed degree, fame, designer clothes, stock options, and a coveted job you got via nepotism are also acceptable ways to beautify.  Some other things I haven't tried that are also costly but at least might help you be less ugly are plastic surgery, meth, coke binges, Botox, heavy makeup, hair dye and extensions, and regular experimental spa treatments.   Hey, over-compensating is expensive, people!  If you don't have the money to look beautiful, you're S.O.L., so I suggest you get your nasty ass back to work selling vacuum cleaners.
• Staunchly heterosexual.  If you're heterosexual, it's best to plant yourself firmly in this through rampant homophobia.  If you happen to be homosexual, luckily that's OK these days in many circles.  But definitely spew some hetero hate too!  Y'all know how you can't stand them 'breeders'.  And if you're one of the people like me who lies nearer to the middle of the Kinsey scale, aka a true bi-sexual, be prepared to be misunderstood at best and hated on all sides at worst.  Much easier for you to just pick a side, preferably hetero, and stick to it like glue.
• On a life quest for more money.  It's pretty clear, in case you aren't paying any fucking attention you ADD case, that money will buy you happiness and is the absolute answer to everything you ever wanted.  And believe me, you need a lot of help, so buying shit is really the only answer.
• Inherently unhappy.  You're poor and ugly, your house isn't as nice as it could be, you don't have a good enough job, you haven't been in love with your spouse for years and he or she is  probably cheating on you anyway.  But worse, you're not the smartest in your field, you're not a great musician or poet, you're not an all-star athlete, your neighbors have a better car, your brother has a better body, your friends have better jobs, better looking spouses and cuter kids, and blah blah and so forth.  As long as you remain unhappy, you are an emotional buyer and can be sold anything.  You will never be good enough, but don't let that stop you from throwing your hard-earned money at pretending you can be.
• Supposed to feel sorry for those less fortunate than you.  This might as well be the PC way to say 'racist' or 'bigot', since it seems like Third-World countries get all of the attention for being 'less fortunate' when there are more than plenty of people here in the good ol' US of A that are having an astonishingly rough go of things.  Some of them really do need your help, since having family to pull strings was never an option for these ppl and you know you probably got a cushy existence handed to you and have been made to feel absolute liberal guilt about this.  Apparently, anyone not on the rat race or not as far along as you are anyway is to be pitied, and maybe even helped to find the 'way' back to the misery that you yourself do not enjoy but nevertheless want to spread around to others.
• Constantly watching TV and listening to pop radio.  The oligarchy of mass media definitely knows how to exploit you for all the reasons I mentioned before.  But for some reason, it can really be soothing.