just a little thinkin'

Talking with A. at the faculty conference, the conversation turned to the question of how much, exactly, we should be able to depend upon our friends. I've been working on my brain tumor memoir lately, trying to find a frame of reference in which to place the story; it needs to be more interesting and original than a "I got sick and then got (somewhat) better" tale filled with both frustrations and joys. And then thinking about how disappointed R. was when more friends didn't show up to her graduation party (including me), I've come to realize think that perhaps the whole point of the story I want to tell is a bigger existential one: even in times of crisis, even when we need people, and even when we are loved, we are still fundamentally alone... and it is in learning to both realize and cope with that fact that we achieve a real sense of autonomy as well as humanity.

the best things

There are times I lament not having a "real" job: I don't have any employer-sponsored health insurance and working out of the house sometimes feels like I can't leave "work" at the office (because, um, I can't). But then I get a phone call at 1:30am to go out, and it occurs to me that one of the best things about my (lack of a real) job is that I don't have to follow the rules. I can go out and drink some whiskey and only get an hour or so of sleep because, well, I'll be able to take a nap the next day (i.e., in about 15 minutes). So while this may mean I don't have health insurance if my liver ever needs attention from all these late-night whiskey nights, in the meantime I'm having fun having very little responsibility to be, well, responsible. Who cares that I didn't get home until 7:30am?

change in the weather

While it certainly felt chilly today (and I felt like the world's worst mother when the boys had to huddle in a filthy doorway on Milwaukee Avenue waiting for the bus because they were too cold in their t-shirts and shorts), I'm really enjoying the fact that it's 60 degrees outside and I shall soon be going to bed. There are few things more enjoyable in the world than snuggling up under a quilt and freshly laundered sheets and feeling a cool breeze coming in from outside while reading and then drifting off to sleep. I have lots of work to do, but for once I'll be pushing it aside to relish the moment, a simple pleasure I deserve to have indulged given all that's been going on.

new things

I did something new tonight: went to The Hideout by myself, knowing I'd find people there I knew, and hoping it would all work out. Ended up texting Mr. Big, who showed up around 10:30pm, and I saw him for the first time since February. It went well.

Ended up staying at The Hideout for the dance party and had a great time tripping the light fantastick. Met some cool people. Was invited to Delilah's for Sunday night, and I think I might well just go.

I may have broken through the I-can't-go-to-shows-alone barrier. It was uncomfortable at times tonight, but it all worked out relatively well. Now if I only could get more than 5 hours of sleep before having to wake up in the morning....

:(

For the most part, I'm a happy person. I possess a great deal of tenacity, and for a number of reasons I'm usually able to keep things under control. But then there are times when, well, I just can't. And I fall apart, and it most always happens after midnight, where all my friends are busy -- sleeping, having fun, going out, getting laid. No one wants a phone call from a weepy friend at 12:07am, and even fewer people want to receive text messages that are the linguistic equivalent of "Waaa! I can't stop crying!"

And so it goes. I don't send the text messages, and I don't call anyone for help. I stupidly reach out to people whom I should just leave alone, and then feel bad for doing so. I refuse to contact the people who can help, because I'm afraid I've bothered them too much already. Any fantasies I have that my phone will ring and someone will be on the other end just to say, "it will be all right" remain just that: stupid ill-formed fantasies. I'll take a hot bath in a futile attempt to cleanse myself of negativity, grief, regret, remorse, and frustration. It probably will do little good, and I'll cry myself to sleep for the umpteenth night in a row.

I guess this is the grieving. Again. And, once more, its endlessness is something I cannot even begin to comprehend.

loneliness, part two

I woke up to an e-mail telling me I'm on the guest list for the Apostle of Hustle show at Schubas Wednesday. This super-cool vegan woman I met from Canada knows the gal who manages the band and thinks we might hit it off. She knows I've been having a rough time lately, and it warms my heart that she'd spontaneously think of something that could cheer me up. I guess it just goes to show it doesn't really pay off to feel sorry for myself in that bubble for too long, though in the moment it's hard to remember someone always does come along to break through and touch me, and I won't dissolve into molecules.

loneliness

Generally speaking, I don't have a problem being alone. With the exception of seeing live music (that makes me feel unsafe), I can't think of anything I'm reluctant to do by myself: movies, theatre, dining out, drinking coffee, walking around the city, traveling late at night on public transportation. That being said, there are times when being alone just feels bad -- not because I'm unhappy, but because it seems as though I'm suspended in an autonomous bubble that remains unbroken by contact from the outside world. There are times, indeed, I feel like Jesse in Before Sunset when he says, "I feel like if someone were to touch me, I'd dissolve into molecules."

This is especially more difficult when people promise to call but don't or are otherwise conspicuously absent. And it isn't as though I can't find things to do: tonight, it was only 30 minutes after a phone call to Alicia that I was sitting in her house eating grilled corn on the cob and watching Little Children. But, at the end of the day, my phone remains unrung and words remain unsaid. The bubble is unbroken. I have a headache, and I'm going to bed.

sunday, bloody sunday

Kim called earlier today, and since I've got a killer headache, I went to lay down on my bed while I chatted with her. My cat, who under normal circumstances keeps her distance, has some weird thing about needing to be by me while I'm in bed or on the telephone. Combine the two, and she becomes one bitchy, needy cat. I wasn't in the place to be a good cat mama at the time, and pushed her off the bed with my foot... well, she HOOKED INTO MY FOOT with one of her claws and was SUSPENDED IN MID-AIR FOR AT LEAST TWO SECONDS while still being HOOKED INTO MY FOOT.

In short, I now have a puncture wound on the top of my foot. I soaked through two Kleenexes before I could get the bleeding to stop (I seriously think she nicked a vein, since it sure seems that there's a vein across the top of my foot that goes right across where the hole is now), and now I've got blood stains on my snazzy green bathmat. Leave it to me to have the weirdest possible things in the world continue to happen.

PS - Word to the wise: Season Four of Sex and the City is NOT TO BE WATCHED if you are a single woman in your 30s who is not currently in a stable long-term relationship. View at your own peril, but don't say I didn't warn you. Sigh.

it was the best of times...

I love my neighborhood. Almost everything I could ever want is within a ten-minute walk of my apartment, ranging from indie stores (Laurie's Planet of Sound, The Dressing Room, City Mouse, The Grind, The Book Cellar) and all kinds of yummy food (Thai, Indian, Mexican, Greek, Italian, sushi) to chain stores (CVS, Walgreens, Jewel) and places to get reliably average cheap vegan food (Subway, Taco Bell, Potbelly). We've got a nice library, a huge park, and a public plaza with a fountain (and free concerts all summer long). All other things that matter (Whole Foods, Trader Joes, black bean cakes and mango salsa from Wishbone, the beach, downtown) are a (sometimes) quick bus or "L" ride away, and it's a safe place to raise kids (not to mention walk home half-drunk from the "L" station at 3am). So why is it that walking through the neighborhood made me think about moving away?

I've been thinking lately that maybe Lincoln Square isn't the neighborhood I belong in but instead represents the type of place I want to be part of. There are some times when I feel completely at home here, a geographic version of stumbling across The One. But then there are other times -- most notably, when walking around the Square in the summertime -- when I feel completely out of sorts.

I look around and I see happy couples with children in $800 strollers and matching Crocs, or the artsy boys and girls who ride their bikes everywhere, or the same seven people who use The Grind as their home office during the week -- and while it's aesthetically interesting to me, I'm not quite sure where I fit into that. There aren't a whole lot of single parents in this neighborhood, and so when I go out with the boys, there are times that's awkward: at The Fiddlehead Cafe last week, both the host and our server asked when my husband would be arriving to join us for dinner, and something similar happened at the library earlier that same day.

The fact of the matter is that I've never had that kind of life: yeah, I've had the husband and the guy who might as well have been, but neither of them ever had a desire to just amble about in any neighborhood with me, much less for no discernable purpose. And so the way my life is now -- ambling about solo or with kids, to the record stores and the bookstores and the cafes and the restaurants -- is pretty much how it's always been. If I've wanted to do anything, it might as well be alone. But Lincoln Square is the kind of place that seems custom-made for couples (and, by extension, families) who want to do things together, not some random lone woman with children in tow who's never even experienced that sense of togetherness, even when she was in relationships.

Then again, I'm not sure anywhere else would be any different. Ultimately, this is an issue I have with the world, not Lincoln Square. It triggers a real sore spot for me: the process of finding a romantic partner who has similar ideas about how to navigate the world. [Of course, the flip side of this is when I do find someone who has those similar ideas, and if things don't work out, the experience of ambling -- alone again -- through the Square becomes doubly difficult.]

It isn't that I'm not okay being alone. I am okay with that. It's just that sometimes I pine for more, and when I see that "more" all around me, it's a constant reminder of all the things I don't have, or I've had briefly but lost.

more on sadness

I hate my life today. I hate crying, I hate feeling so sad and empty, and I hate that I don't know when this will ever end. I hate spending my life at 1:32am crying and crying and crying, and getting a headache because of all the crying. I just want it all to end right now, but I don't see how I can possibly make that happen without hurting myself, and I definitely don't want to do that in the least. I just want the pain to go away. I'd do anything to just feel nothing right now. Why can't someone just come and help me and take it all away? I feel so alone and abandoned and just plain unloved, even though I know I'm not. This is what 1:32 am does to me today, I guess.

even more stupidity

It SEEMED like a good idea to go out last night. But it wasn't.

Actually, it could have turned out well, if not for the three beers, three shots of bourbon (or was it four?), and the two cigarettes I bummed off of a 25-year-old guy with a nice handshake. And the fact that I hadn't really eaten all day didn't help things. (I did have Frites and a yummy salad at the Hopleaf, though...)

This is what I get for basically not exercising my drinking muscles for three months. Somehow, I got home in one piece, set my alarm for a responsible 9:30am, and undressed without ripping any clothing.

I woke up sounding like a 60-year-old smoker from the South Side and found a hand towel in my toilet. I'd like to think the latter was an accident...

stupidity

In retrospect, it was a BAD IDEA to see Waitress today. Where are my friends to smack me upside the head when I need them? Oh, I know. They're all at the Chicago Blues Festival and the Printers Row Book Fair, both of which I avoided today because, instead, I was trying to make miracles happen. [As it turns out, said performance is best left to professionals.]

weirdness

I received a MySpace message from L., telling me she'd seen "a cute guy with a nose piercing" at the Irving Park Y. He looked familiar, and then she realized it was EmoBoy. He was signing someone else's kid out and on the phone trying to get directions to Blues Fest. And it was only about two weeks ago that I almost ran him over at Clark and Irving Park Road before bumping into him an hour later at the Pick Me Up Cafe.

Of course, when she mentioned the nose piercing, I made it a point to remind her I'd paid for that damn thing.

In a city filled with just under three million people, how is it that the ones I want to disappear won't and the ones I want to stick around can't wait to skedaddle?

tiptoe

tiptoeing through the used condoms
strewn on the piers
off the west side highway
sunset behind
the skyline of jersey
walking towards the water
with a fetus holding court in my gut
my body highjacked
my tits swollen and sore
the river has more colors at sunset
than my sock drawer ever dreamed of
i could wake up screaming sometimes
but i don't
i could step off the end of this pier but
i've got shit to do
and i've an appointment on tuesday
to shed uninvited blood and tissue
i'll miss you i say
to the river to the water
to the son or daughter
i thought better of
i could fall in love
with jersey at sunset
but i leave the view to the rats
and tiptoe back