Deal

Dealing with grief

I thought I dealt, or didn't 'deal' but 'lived' with grief, and then I read how Björk is dealing with, suffering through, her grief. http://grapevine.is/mag/feature/2015/02/06/bjorks-folk-music At least she mourns, she rages, she's knocked down and stunned by grief. Me, I just ... bow down and bear it, suffering, wallowing, and I'm like ... I have a long way to go, don't I?

Which is to say, it's been ... tough. Fired/quit my job on Friday, and all weekend, just ... busy, a neighbor's 40th birthday party, so I had to be nice and fun and congratulatory for her and her family, and the whole time I'm just wondering: My life is such a mess! Will I ever make it to 40? Will I want to? She, Caroline (yes, CAROLINE!) is 40, and preggers (yes!) with baby number ... 6? and is working the family farm, slaughtering chickens and rabbits, and so flush with happiness, and here I am, and ... what have I done with my life? No life, jobless loser! Well, at least I updated this story, you know. I don't know why I'm writing this, maybe to beg your indulgence that maybe sometimes 'The Author(esse)' has troubles of her own and sometimes it's hard to update soon.

Which is just bullshit, because this whole weekend all I wanted to do was to write this chapter. You want me to update soon, but not as much as I want to get that update out there. What really hurts as a writer is not to be writing, but it just seems to me that all of my life is conspiring against me not to write. Like, this weekend? All I wanted was to be left alone, but I just wasn't.

But, then again, I did have fun at the party and was happy for Caroline and ... I don't know: what would have happened to me if I weren't bugged and I was left alone?

I suppose I'll go find another job and go back to pretending I'm a normal, well-adjusted person and that everything is 'fine.'

... I finished a story. For once in my life. Victoria Alone, and 'life' goes on for Victoria, but she, and Summer, got their happy ending, even as life goes on, and I'm happy for a character I wrote, that she got a happy ending, even though life goes on, and I wonder what that feels like, but I know how it feels, for special times in my life, that happy ending, that happy now when you're with somebody you love who loves you and life is going great enough that you're enjoying it, your life, your job, your dear, dear, dearest one and you're fine even with you.

I like that feeling when I've got that, that things are going fine and you're fine because you actually are.

If you have that now, don't hold onto it with a strangle-hold (because you won't, you'll just glide through that groove, anyway), and if you're not having that now, go out and get that, or dive in deep enough to wipe away those bitter tears, then dive up out of yourself, look around you, and then go get that, your happiness.

p.s. "Which is just bullshit, because this whole weekend all I wanted to do was to write this chapter." Not true. All I wanted to do this weekend, and now, is something else. But I'm a strong, capable, independent woman. I'm a big girl now, and big girls don't cry, do they?

They don't have time to cry, and if they're seen crying, it just reinforces everything, doesn't it? "Oh, it's okay, dearie, we understand!"

When they don't, they don't at all, but it's just confirmed in their minds the whole women-can't-play-in-the-big-leagues, so then none of us can break down or be weak, because then we betray all of us.

I guess I'm not such a big girl, after all. Am I.

I really don't want your pity, nor your understanding. I know you pity me, and you do understand. I know this, and thank you, really: some of you have pulled me through when I simply couldn't.

But.

I don't. I don't pity me. I hate me. And I don't understand. Not at all. Why would God put me on this Earth if all I am is just this fuck-up?

A strong, independent woman doesn't need validation from her job, or from what her friends think, or ... anything.

And that's just another slap to the face, that I'm weak, and I'm not supposed to be, not in this modern day-and-age, but if you look back through history, women had to be even stronger than now, just to survive, themselves, or even to keep their families alive. So what am I moaning about?

Another slap to the face: I have no reason to complain, so I may as well shut the fuck up.

Fuck my life.

Haha. Too late.

This is just the pitch blackness I have to work through, and no, it's not that time of the month, thanks for asking, ... it's just that point in my life where I have to look myself squarely in the eye, see me for what I am, and say to that little girl looking back at me in the mirror: "Buck up, kiddo."

And buck that kiddo up.

That's all. That's all there is to it.

Skyping

You remember the day when they didn't have Skype to Afghanistan? Or email, even? Or running water, so laundry service, for our troops over there?

Forget it.

And Sophie is fretting over how she can skype Lauren and why is it taking so long? SO LONG? LIKE DAYS? HA! TRY THREE MONTHS BY INTERNATIONAL SNAIL MAIL!

Sophie DOES have it so much better. The problem with having it better, WAY BETTER, is that you don't appreciate it unless you had it worse before.

Sophie, having it better now, is having the worst time in her life, the poor girl, because she doesn't know fuck-all about skype to skype Lauren, so screaming: "Just skype Lauren, Sophie; Jeez!" would only make her feel worse, because she would say, in a very small voice: "but how?" and probably just crawl away and hide under her covers, feeling like a shit.

Not that she doesn't deserve that, for not acting when she should have, so some us are granted the ability to see and to know what to say and when so we don't have these problems down the road. "Oh, Lauren, how do I skype you when you get over there?"

Simple as that.

But then, if she DID say that, she knows, and you do, too, exactly what Lauren would say: "So, okay, and you want to skype me ... why?"

And then Soph is caught, isn't she, because then she has to lie her ass off, or, worse, she has to tell the truth, and she just doesn't ... want to face certain truths right now. Some truths are way too much to face when we believe we're in a certain place in our lives, aren't they?

Or maybe you don't feel these truths hitting you, as they are knocking at Sophie's door. I know I never like facing the truth. Ever. Truth is a hard, hard mistress, telling you, "You know, `phfina, you're out of a job now, and who's fault is it that you don't have one, right now, today?"

Or: "You know, `phfina, you're going to sleep alone tonight, and you're waking up alone tomorrow, and why? Every single one of the relationships you've been in, you've royally screwed up, haven't you, `phfina, and you've left how many girls' hearts broken up and down the East Coast? How much longer are you going to run from what you've done and who you are? Running is such good exercise, you cross-country runner, isn't it? You like to run, don't you? You gonna ever run back to Brenda, your mom's friend? or Wild-Cate with her hennaed hair or ... not Julia anymore, she's happily married with kid now, too late for you to unfuck up that failed relationship, your first, nor with Saga, now, still, unhappily married with three kids and one prevented suicide attempt and because of whom, `phfina?"

Yeah, I just so love facing these truths, and the mirror, every single day, knowing I'm exactly where I am in my life right now because I know who put me there.

Um. Wow. TMI, right? But that's truth: Soph wants to skype; Soph 'can't' skype, but why? Because she set herself up not to, because setting herself up to skype with Lauren entails facing the mirror.

And the truth is ...

The truth is ... I could be better than I am right now. I could be happier. I could be a blessing to myself and my family and my friends, not be the broken little burden that I am to them. Sure, I'm doing a good thing with my writing, but that doesn't mean I could be a million times better than I am.

Soph is (moderately) rich (not 'Rosalie rich') and content, but is happiness contentment? If it is, shouldn't she be happy? Why is she sad?

Because her contentment is a lie: it's just going along with how she thinks she's supposed to be, and she's content in that little box she's constructed for herself.

But it's a little box, and she constructed it, and now, she's beginning to see the outlines of the box.

But to face the 'Truth' the whole big world outside of the box ... well, that involves thinking outside the box, and maybe, or maybe not, Sophie's ready to start thinking about thinking about thinking outside the box.

But thinking doesn't make one happy. Nor does doing (like actually skyping Lauren, like a conversation with Lauren ever made ANYONE happy?) (or baking cookies) (the second time) (when she didn't). No: being is happiness, that is the universal truth. Being is happiness, happiness is being, but really being, not faking it (a fake-o is a happy-o for whom?), and not being is sadness and loss. But how can Sophie be when all she can do is think about thinking about how to skype because why, to tell Lauren off? And then she'll be happy?

I envy Sophie. She's daring. She's on a journey, and she has not fucking clue one where this is going, and it's weird and it's wild, but when she actually starts going down the path, she's smiling so hard it hurts her cheeks, even as it scares the shit out of her.

"How about you, `phfina?" I need to get a job. I need to get a job because I need to get a job. So I can pay the bills and eat so I can go to work on my job.

Do you see how limited my world-view is?

And as tiny-small as my view is, I see it, and I see so many people not seeing it. The vast majority of people in the world are living lives as small as mine, even HAPPY to work for the Man, because that's what they're supposed to do ...

Oh, really? And people Live, Learn, Love, and Leave a Legacy by working at a job 9-to-5?

Maybe some do, maybe there're some saints in the workplace, but it's not because they have a job and do their job well, it's because they ARE saints. They BE sanctified, and they bless us with their holiness, their coworkers, at the job, and, when they return home, they bless their families.

I 'need' a job, not to be sanctified, but because I'm a tiny little box that defines my universe around 8 hours a day that I will freely give to somebody else so they can tell me what to do.

Sophie is not constrained that way, but she's just as constrained in other ways, her 'world-view,' but she's starting the journey of 1,000 miles. Me? I don't even dare to look at the 8-fold paths in front of me. I'm too scared to, because starting a journey like that involves risk, and hope, and growth.

And that's too scary for this little girl.

Besides. I don't have anybody to skype with. I made sure of that.

Have you heard about the lonesome loser?
Beaten by the Queen of Hearts every time?
Have you heard about the lonesome loser?
She's a loser, and she just gave up trying.

Sometimes, skype is more than skype, isn't it?

... and, sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar, after all ... for those people blessed with seeing the world simply as it is, and not complicating it more than it needs to be.

Where I belong

I effed up a job interview so badly I was ready to run from the "star chamber" (their term) crying, but it just kept going on and on, and then finally the manager, a little old buddha, said, "Miss, I'm just not sure you'd be happy here, you're just way too overqualified for the position, maybe I can talk to another manager and see if they have something more challenging for you."

And I was like, "okay," but inside I was almost screaming. Excuse me? You don't know if I'd be 'happy' working for you? I'll be happy to pay the rent. I'll be happy to eat. I'll be happy to have insurance! I don't have any money and I don't ...

I don't know what I'm going to do this month. So I have to start making calls, asking people to give me a month so I can pay the bills, but what does that say about me? Nothing, right? I just can't pay right now.

But inside I feel so ... ashamed that I'm not together, that I don't have a job, and what does that make me?

A failure, that's what it makes me. I'm a girl that can't get a stupid job because I'm overqualified as an administrative assistant, but when I go for something in payroll, I don't have the education and I don't have the experience, so they're like: what are you doing here? Maybe you need an entry-level position as an intern or you could go to our administrative staffing, and it's just a big, vicious circle, and I'm the loser in the middle.

This too shall pass, and I'll be happily employed somewhere as an, idk, art curator, or a librarian ("please tell us about the duwey decimal system." "The what?" "Uh, yeah, thank you for your time.") or as a bar maid/wench ("You touch my ass again, I fucking break your fucking arm!" "Ooh, feisty bitch!" *SMACK!*) ... or something.

I think my problem is I don't fit anywhere. I'm scared of people, and that comes out as shyness or in-your-face-ness. I don't belong in the past, because they way the Greeks treated women? WAY better than their contemporaries, but they were still property: chattel. I don't belong inside a Twilight book, because I'd try to punch Edward in the face, if I ever got enough guts, and I'd end up as supper for James and Victoria. Not so bad with Victoria, I suppose, but being sucked dry while the neurotoxin in the venom makes your last seconds ones of pure agony?

I don't belong here... because of everything. I was called "Unearthy," but that's not even right: the space aliens would get tired of my restlessness and constant bitching.

I ... truly am a siren, a mermaid, a selkie. And I keep looking and looking and looking for my otter-skin, and keep not finding it, so I can't swim away and be with my mer-people and comb my long, full-bodied mer-hair (mermaids' only clothing, don't you know, so their hair is loooong!) and sing songs and hymns as we blow through our conch shells in our mer-kingdom of Atlantis ... until I got bored there, or a mer-guy'd try to cop a feel, and I'd even be kicked out of there, for disorderly conduct.

Hail, Eris!

I am discord. I am pure chaos, but aren't ... but wasn't Eris happy? Why am I not happy? My life (heh, right, like I have a life) is a mess, and I wreck everything in my wake.

I wish I could write me as a story, so I could look at the story and say ... 'eh, this character isn't really working.'

And just write me out of it, just be a figment of my imagination, and nobody but me would know that I ever existed. Just like my character Nichole in Ridden, something I tried, but I don't know if she works, she brings too much to the story that's isn't about her, so ...

So with an 'eh,' she's gone, and none of you knew, nor cared.

I wish I could do that to me. I just bring too much to this story of life that isn't about me, not really, it's about you and everything else, and we don't need the complications of me being around. I wish I could just write me out of this story of life, and nobody would know, nor care.

Then ... then I would be truly happy. Oblivion would be my fate, and I would taste gall on my tongue and my eyes would see nothing but pitch and tar, and ... I would be ... happy.

Because then it wouldn't be about me any more. Truly. And I wouldn't have to pretend any more. I would have to pretend that I was happy or I was fine or that I was okay and getting by.

Because then I would be nothing. And I'd finally be free of this world and it's false hopes and promises.

And I'd, truly, be happy then.

One Life

My day was ... eh.

I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about yesterday, today, or tomorrow. They all run together and are pointless, anyway. The only thing I want from my day is just to get through it, and if I don't, because I died, then thank God! and FINALLY!

But one thing I found today is this.

Im just me. A lost 23 year old girl, trying to find her way, her path. But its not so bad, cause I have Sham. Cause I have Justin. Cause I have mom and Izzy. Oh, and lets not forget Phfina, lol.

If you're reading this, Phfina, lets make a deal. Lets try to be happy. Lets try to live and save a life, like, you saved mine.

Smh.

— PussyNinja

And no matter what my day was or is before, now it's different, because, one day, because I existed, a girl is alive, and has a gf and joined the Navy, and everything, where she wouldn't have done any of that. But somehow, I, and what I've written, made a difference of one life.

I don't give a shit about my day any more. It's different now.

And that, no matter how I feel, good, bad, whatever, will never be taken away from me. I won't be here anymore someday, and people will forget me and move on.

But I won't forget. Ever.

Shame

Dear Diary (for which the whole world can read),

A friend of mine asked me what I would wear to church today, and I didn't answer, because, as is the common ailment of our sex, I didn't have a thing to wear, in a closet stuffed to overflowing.

I have pretty dresses, and like I fancy the Irish do, I favor the green, and I have solid colors and prints ... and a little yellow summer dress number from the Banana Republic that I love.

But what did I wear to Mass today? I didn't know at the time of the question, so I didn't answer, instead, scurrying, as I do, to the closet to stare at it and grab something off the rack, ready-to-wear.

In the old days, the commoners wore 'off the rack' and 'ready-to-wear.' Rosalie wore neither: her dresses were made for her, and they fit her perfectly, as her hats did, as her gloves did.

Now, we girls try to fit ourselves into 'one-shape-fits-all' dresses, and either suffer the embarrassment of bursting out of them, or the embarrassment of them falling off our nothing-to-cling-to figures.

I don't wear off-the-shoulder numbers, if you didn't guess by now. Partially because of modesty ... what if a guy stared at my collar bone and had licentious thoughts?!?! ... and mostly because of practicality ... I don't have 'milk jugs,' or put another way: my 'happy fun bags' aren't bags, and all they have is happiness and fun, because they've got nothing else to grab or to hold onto ... just ask my dresses.

But the dress I wore today was Shame.

There we were at Mass, bb and I and my nieces up in the choir loft, singing sweetly, like birds, but it wasn't a sweet moment.

bb was getting angrier and angrier. I could see it in his stance. I could see it in the set of his jaw. And I was like: what did I do? I mean, what did I do more?

I am an utter and complete disappointment to my family.

But I didn't see anything I was doing wrongly, so I almost turned on him and smacked him, right there at the beginning of Mass.

And then he ... left.

I was like, what the FUCK!

He left the pew, walked right over to the priest, and handed the priest the laminated placard of the revised responses that the Church just did for the English translation.

And I was like, lightbulb! bb had seen that the priest hadn't had that, and I guess he got angry that everybody else didn't help the priest, so bb goes right up to him, right in the middle of Mass and hands him the sheet.

He came back. He sat next to me. He didn't say one word. He didn't look at me reprovingly.

But I knew what he was thinking. 'Why didn't you notice the priest looking lost up there? Why didn't you help him? You were on the aisle seat. Why did I have to get up, go around you, make a scene when you could have opened your eyes and helped.'

But as if I could. I mean: really! Me, go up in front of all those people, and me, a girl, hand the priest something to continue the Mass?

I mean: I'm getting sick just thinking of it.

But that's just it. It's all me, me, me, and how I think I look, and that paralyzes me into inaction.

Or paralyzes me to wrong action. Stupid action.

And so I do nothing, or I do everything wrong, and bb has to pick up the pieces, and, in Mass, in front of all those people, he goes right up there, fearlessly, I mean, he doesn't even care! and helps the Mass continue, whereas everybody else is just stuck in their pews, not even noticing, like me, or not brave enough, to do something about it.

And that's what he was thinking about me: self-absorbed. Useless. A waste.

And knowing he thought that of me.

You want to know the color of the dress I wore to church today? It was red. Bright red. The color of my cheeks as I burned in embarrassment at what a ...

What a burden I am ... what a burden I am to my family. How useless I am.

Because you don't know the second half of the story. The part of the story of how I moved down to Washington D.C. from nowhere Connecticut.

Because I didn't move.

bb came and picked me up.

From the hospital.

There's the whole precursor of how I ended up there, with my mom screaming and dialing 911 at the same time, and me just looking up at her stupidly from the kitchen floor, but I couldn't say it would be all right, because my mouth was full of cotton and how I couldn't seem to move my arms because they were so heavy, but everything felt ... funny, you know? heavy, and it felt ... I felt tired, but something felt very, very wrong.

Getting your stomach pumped ... it's not something you forget easily.

Mom has to work, she can't watch me 24/7, so what's she going to do? Hand me over to the State?

So bb drove all the way to Connecticut and picked me up from the hospital.

So you think I have my own apartment, with that ... history? histories?

What are multiple suicide attempts called? I mean, besides stupid?

Those steps I fell down, those were the steps from the kitchen to my bedroom they built for me, downstairs.

You think I participate in family activities because they like me so much? Or so they can make sure I don't confuse my diet coke with the kitchen cleaner?

You really have to wonder, considering me, why people try to keep people alive who are so determined to die. I mean, it'd be better for everyone if they just let people like me just ... go away. No fuss, no blame, and no ...

And no more waste of space and effort watching me like a hawk to make sure I don't off myself so that what? so that what? I can face another useless day in my useless job, ... 'and would you like mocha sprinkles on your latte, sir?' ... or my new useless job where, instead of staring at the suits come and go to work, serving them coffee, now I'm one of them, or one of their doormats, staring at a spreadsheet all day, filling in numbers, and getting shouted at when I get something wrong, and getting shouted at when I get something right (yes, you read that correctly), when I do the payroll in half a day where it took a staff of three to do it over a weekend, and yes, they worked over the weekend to get the payroll in Monday morning's mail, and yes, I do what they did in half a day with my spreadsheet, but because it's Excel, everybody thinks they can put their fingers all over it, screwing up the formulæ, and then blaming me when they screw it up saying nobody can understand it and I have to make it simpler.

So here I am, all grown up, with all the other grown ups riding that metro train to their daily grind with their iPhones and droids out to make sure it all gets blotted out so they can make it to 'happy' hour so they can blot it out some more so they can do that again tomorrow, for ... what?

Or I could be a kid again. I could sneak ... no, I don't even need to do that: I could just walk right onto Annadale High School grounds or Edgar Allen Poe, but not TJ, Thomas Jefferson because you need to be somebody with a proven track record for them to look, scornfully, at your grades and deign to allow you to enter, I could have Mrs. A_ drag me in there by the arm and register me in 10th grade, and start that shit all over again and live through, okay, hell, okay? Hell! with me becoming this thing pushed around by everybody else's opinion until I end up on the floor again, either in the classroom, screaming, or on the kitchen, more than half dead, because somebody said, 'Are you really in 10th grade, because it looks like you skipped some grades,' and then look down at my chest, and smirk, and leave me in the girls' bathroom, looking in the mirror reflecting the tears that will, or that I will not allow to fall from my eyes.

The irony of it ... don't you just get the irony of it? Instead of being ratted out for being too old for my grade, I'd be the subject of an exquisite vivisection on posing as 10th grader instead of going back my 6th-grade classes. Now imagine Rosalie going to Forks High School and fitting right in in 10th grade, and now wonder, truly wonder, how she stopped herself, every day, and in every class, from ripping off those vain, self-righteous idiots' heads, and then showing the teachers their own livers for their arrogant presumptive attitudes.

You see, I'm not a woman. A woman is a person who can hold her baby in her arms. My baby didn't come that far to where I could hold her before she died.

Yes, I've had lots of casual sex. Lots of randy college boys on campus, too, if you didn't know that fact.

I'm not a girl anymore, either. I'm trapped in a girl's body, but I've lived too much death to be a girl anymore, and to continue to play the game of being a girl.

I'm neither a girl nor a woman, I'm a girl-not-woman. I'm a child who's seen too much, but instead of allowing me to close my eyes, they keep pumping my stomach. And those hospital bills are another burden I can never repay, another reminder of what a failure I am.

...Writing.

Writing is good therapy. I mean, take this post, for example. Probably very therapeutic for Saga to read and to revel in the fact that she got away from this no-life jailbait loser.

And I can always review this post, and say, "Wow! Look at how far I've come!" and marvel at my amazing ability to claw my way through life, because I'm so gifted and talented at survival.

"Hey, baby," is called out to me, "how's it going?" And instead of answering with the truthful answer of, "You are more right that you know," I answer with the expected answer: "Fine."

I'm doing just 'fine.'

I'm a good student. And I learn from the best. Whenever anybody ever asks Mom how she's doing, she answers, 'Fine,' and says no more, nothing about her just scraping by after her husband left her, her cancer, or her drinking, or smoking, or the one and only failure in her life, a daughter of a college professor who couldn't even succeed in dropping out of life.

Mom and I are on good terms. She came to visit me once, to see how I was doing, because whenever she called and asked how I was doing, I said I was doing 'fine.' Just like Dad, dear old Dad; he came with Mom and wasn't that just a lovely, awkward, family reunion.

But I can tell people I majored in Ancient Greek lit. I have that going for me.

Funny how nobody ever asked to see my degree. They just say, 'Oh, ... impressive!' and give me a job that has a skill level of pouring coffee in a cup, one cup at a time, or putting numbers in columns and making sure they add up ... you know: third-grade math. It's all about style. And I have plenty of that: style and attitude will get you anywhere, baby.

Heh: 'baby.'

So now what? I suppose I could go back to work Monday morning. I got paid this last weekend. I got paid a lot of money. A lot more money than if I were in High school, even selling drugs, which I don't do by the way. ... Sell drugs, that is.

In the supply-and-demand economy, I'm on the demand side ... you know, a 'user,' or as Ayn Rand like to call me, a 'moocher.'

'Guns or dollars!' That was Ayn Rand's lens, that is: how she saw the world. She missed out on high school and college today. Although drugs are all about guns AND dollars, so maybe her lens isn't all that distorted...

But back to the here and now, ... I mean, I have a job and everything!

Just little `phfina, a good little Catholic girl, sharing her opinions with her dear diary. Just a few words on paper, meaning and signifying nothing.

I think I'll have that diet coke now.

Heart

Oz never did give nothin' to the Tin Man,
That he didn't, didn't already have.

And 'cause' never was reason for believin'
Or the Tropic of Sir Galahad.

America, "Tin Man"

— `phfina's thoughts:

Oz gave the Tin Man a heart, so that he could love.

Oz can't give me that. I don't have a heart. I don't have a soul. I don't have dreams, nor hope. I have nothing. I am nothing.

So, funny, we all think at times, that so much is written and sung about a pumping vessel, a valve, that it has so much meaning to so many, and all it does is sustain life, and, funny, again, that it actually defines, life, or, more accurately, when it stops, it defines Death.

I wish I even had Death, I don't have that. But it will have me. Very soon, today even. There will come a time when time is no more for me, and then what? Then the charade is over, the curtain falls, not to rise again, like everybody else will, on the Last Day. I'm not even Left Behind; I'm not even a Forgotten One, the old Elder God that nobody remembers the names to or even that they existed ... Melissa is my name, and nobody remembers her, the most powerful goddess of Crete, now gone, at least she had her time, and her prominence, ... I have neither. I am neither. I am neither this nor that, neither quid nor haec, neither noumenon nor phenomenon, just nothing, and not even that.

Oz never gave nothing to the Tin Man, that he didn't, he didn't already have.

Oz can't give me a heart, either, it's not that I don't have it. It's that there's no 'I' to give it to.

Pensée du jour

... you know, I go to Church a lot. Twice today, and then again tomorrow for Sunday Mass.

Doesn't mean anything. I can't say: 'Lord, Lord! I went to Mass a lot.'

Because you know who else does?

Satan.

At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, and when the devils cried out 'You are the son of the Living God!' ... what did Jesus say to them?

'Yeah, that's right'? or 'Hey, thanks!'

No, he rebuked them into silence, cast them into swine who then thereupon flew over a cliff's edge.

There's not one thing I can do to save myself. I can't show my attendance record. I can't ...

You know what kills me? People who say, 'Well, if X isn't in Heaven, then I want no part of it.' Saga said that. She said if I weren't in Heaven, they couldn't drag her into it.

You know what Heaven is? I do, it's right there in the Bible. It's Mass, 24/7 (in Eternity) (so the '24/7' is a very sorry joke), it's Angels and Powers falling on their faces, burning with Love, and all they can cry out is 'Holy, Holy, Holy!'

Okay. Really. Who would ever pick that?

And Hell? The path of righteousness is above, the path to hell is the path that Rocks! People today would line up to be able to get into Hell.

Hello?

And the thing is, people sold their souls to get money, power, food, luxury, ... Wales. Nowadays, the Devil doesn't need to do a thing. He doesn't need to lift a finger. People have sold out on themselves already, and they get not 'nothing' in return, what they get in return is misery and despair.

All you have to do is look at the faces on the metro, every single vacant, hopeless face, plugged into their google reader or their iPod/Pad/Phone to verify this.

Or do what I do. Look into the mirror.

My one consolation? God is good.

And that stupid movie with whats-her-name and the dumb jock. God makes a special appearance in prison and the guy's like, in a panic, crying out: 'I'm about to lose my soul! And what can I do?'

And God, patiently, explains, 'It's not your soul.'

It's not my soul. It's God's. So I hope to God that God will take it back to Himself in the end.

Summertime Sadness

Kiss me hard before you go
Summertime sadness
I just wanted you to know
That baby, you're the best

I got my red dress on tonight
Dancing in the dark in the pale moonlight
Got my hair up real big beauty queen style
High heels off, I'm feeling alive

Oh, my God, I feel it in the air
Telephone wires above are sizzling like a snare
Honey I'm on fire, I feel it everywhere
Nothing scares me anymore...(2, 3, 4)...

Kiss me hard before you go
Summertime sadness
I just wanted you to know
That baby, you're the best

I've got that summertime, summertime sadness
S-s-summertime, summertime sadness
Got that summertime, summertime sadness
Oh, oh oh

I'm feelin' electric tonight
Cruising down the coast goin' 'bout 99
Got my bad baby by my heavenly side
I know if I go, I'll die happy tonight

"Summertime Sadness" Lana Del Rey

— `phfina commentary

We choose our fates, and we choose how we feel about our choices.

That's it.

So simple.

And I've got that Summertime Sadness, I find myself crying so hard these days, so hard my eyes are red when I wake up, looking like warmed-over death. I mean: look at Lana Del Rey! She sings songs, that, if I may be so bold, are like my stories, so disturbingly visceral, and so true. Sex, alcohol, drugs, despair.

... Life. ... or death. Doesn't matter. Nothing does anymore. What's the point? There is none, so why bother?

My choice, right?

I just attended a death anniversary Mass of a priest, a Monsignor at my church, that everybody loved. He was a hard, hard man, he smoked hard, he drank hard, he never, ever backed down from his principles. If had ever meet him, he would have probably beat the sin out of me and preformed an exorcism, just in case.

And he would have done in with Love in his heart.

And the thing is, he chose it, and he was the happiest man in the world for it, because it was never about him, he gave his life to God, and he had open-heart surgery, an appendectomy, the KKK on his church yard burning crosses calling for his death (he was THAT old) which he stood up to without fear, and when he was about to die, he didn't tell a soul, he just went around, having supper with the people he loved and cared for, and then he died, leaving thousands of people touched with a life that was never about him.

He didn't care, either, see? But still he chose: he chose God, and he chose to be happy about that choice, no matter what life threw his way.

Me, I care. I care too damn much, but about the wrong thing, about that girl in the mirror, that, really, doesn't matter at all, not at all, but I choose to try to not look bad and walk around with this chip on my shoulder seventeen times bigger than little me (all of 17 pounds?) (The merchant of Venice wouldn't get his pound of flesh from me), all wind and arrogance.

You know, I almost never, ever would've listened to Lana Del Rey. You know why? It was given to me by somebody about whom I'd already made my mind up. "Fuck, all stupid fucking romantic mushy love ballads; I can't poison my mind with more of this shit!"

That's me. I choose, but then I really don't all: I snip, snide, snicker, and look down my nose at all of you, better than all of you, because, hey, I'm self-aware, and I'm me, and I know what I like and what I don't like and if you dare to offer anything to me, well, obviously, you're wrong, and how dare you, anyway in the first place?

Monsignor Browne was like that. The Mother Superior said, "you know, Father, you really should stop smoking."

He snapped right back to her: "You know, you really should mind your own business," and finished his smoke.

He loved his smokes, he loved his drink, and he didn't give a fuck what anybody else thought, because he knew people in their hearts because he knew himself, and he knew all their darkness of their 'harmless advice' of trying to change him to be more like ... well, like them, and not like Christ.

I learned today, a protestant Church lost their minister, and they asked him to preach at their church ...

Do you know what he did?

If I put myself in a priest's shoes ... which I will never do, btw, as God wills that I don't ... I would've been like, excuse me? Convert to Catholicism, or go to hell you heretics!

That's `phfina for you, so tolerant and understanding! @_@

You know what Fr. Browne did?

He went, every Sunday, for a year, to their church, and spoke on God and Love, right from their Bible (there are differences in the rendering of the texts in the Catholic and the Protestant Bibles). And he would've done it for years more if the Diocese hadn't transferred him to a new parish across the Commonwealth (when they found out?). And, looking at the people today... today! ... with love shining in their eyes for their Father Browne, those people probably fell in love with him, too, for what? for him giving himself up to serve others with nothing other than love in his heart for the people he loved.

And look at Lana Del Rey, my foolish pride and arrogance prevented from listening to one word she sang to me every word she sings about her throwing her life away, so carefully destroying herself, over and over and over again, because why? Because she's alive and she's, yeah, because she's a woman, in the pointless, hopeless, throwaway world.

And her only hope is ... cocaine? PBR? A good hard fuck her bf, or, well, any boy within arms reach, ... and why?

And why? So she can be alive ... be alive for just one second of her worthless, pointless life where everything, all her senses are dumbed-down and dulled in this grey nothingness we all push through, posing, 'working', faking our way through, but never, ever acknowledging what really doing: which is anything possible to avoid staring Truth in the eye and calling a spade a spade.

That is: looking right in the mirror and acknowledging that what we've done with our lives, the only thing we've done with our lives, is to waste it away.

What's the point?

The point is: Fr. ... Msgnr. Browne, Lana Del Rey, they chose opposite.

But they had the guts to choose.

Msgnr. Browne chose to give his life to Christ ... to be a 'Christ'ian, to follow Christ to the end, and he was happy with that.

Lana Del Rey chose to look in the mirror, and actually sing her heart out, to give herself, completely and entirely to any and everything, to burn out, a supernova, and to fade away, but to proclaim to her very last breath her despair and agony.

Me?

A faker. A poser. Too good for anybody and everybody.

That's why, when I think of her, I'm so happy for Saga. She chose to move on with her life, and she made the right choice, to relegate me firmly to the past.

Because that's the only way I can help anybody who loves me ... to help them get over me as quickly as possible and to forget me, because I'm not a choice, I'm a failure. I fail over and over and over again to choose, but I surely have my snide commentary on everybody else and what losers they are.

And I have the gall to be self-righteous about my hypocrisy.

And then, when I have to face the nothingness of my pointless day, I stare at a bright and sparkly screen, so unlike my dull and grey life, playing video games. They have prescriptions for my 'condition,' so hey, I can always get strung out on drugs, because that's so much better, being a docile little fucktoy cumdump cog in this superinfoindustrial machine with metro rail to take us to and from the machines that we are walking ghosts in.

Hevl Iz Havolim

Oy, Hevl iz havolim,
Oy, Hevl iz havolim,

One's whole life is misery,
Another lives large...
Oy, vanity is vanities
Oy, vanity is vanities
A dream is the world
And the world runs on money

— `phfina's commentary:

Who's my favorite author these days? (and for all time?)

I would have to say, judging what comes up on my phone, Qoheleth.

I mean, for fuck's sake! Finally!

I mean: really. There's somebody who really gets it (or 'got it,' he's way dead by now). He looked at the whole world, from the very tip top ('King of Jerusalem' when Jerusalem was where it was at and happening in the whole world), and saw it, saw it for what it really was.

He saw me. He saw you. And he looked in the mirror and saw himself.

Nobody does that. Nobody.

He did.

He saw it all, and said: 'Oy, hevl iz havolim.'

I mean, all of it. All of it.

Read his words, all of them, and bit by bit, you'll start to get it. You'll see people working. You'll see yourself working...

And to what end? To what purpose? For whom?

You toil from sunrise to sunset, only to do the same thing tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

And what does it get you? More toil. And a scolding from your boss for not meeting the impossible deadlines he sets for you as you see him take a 'comp-time' day off, but you? No: you have to do the books, because who else would?

Or you succeed. And then what? You die and somebody else languishes with the wealth you accumulated with your hard work, wasting it away on pleasure until it's all gone.

So, what then? 'Fuck it all, and why don't we get drunk, and screw?'

So, you'll see yourself drinking, partying it up with your friends, getting blasted, getting wasted, and for what? For happiness? Yeah, right: if happiness is what I see in bars, or afterwards, the morning afterwards waking up with a complete stranger, or worse, waking up alone with your old friend, Mr. Hangover, soon to be follow by Ms. Porcelain Goddess.

You'll see yourself sneaking off, alone, in private, to do the things you hope nobody else will know what you're doing.

And you know it's a lie, you know, what you're doing, hiding from everyone, is plain for all to see, and you know why you're hiding what you're doing.

Because it's evil. And wretched.

Welcome to the world, loser.

That's what you are, and you know it, and your defensiveness at me calling you a loser? That only proves it, buster.

Because no matter how much you think you're faking out your friends and family, there's still that one person you lie to all the time, but, deep down, she knows the truth, and you would, too, if you had the guts to look her in the eye and call what you see when you look in her eyes in the mirror.

Qoheleth did. And he wrote it down in his journal, for us to read, 2400 years later.

2400 years later, and his words still apply today.

So, what do you do, given that everything, everything, is empty and meaningless.

Nope, nope: that one thing you think is so important. Nope. It's not.

Really, it's not. And you know it. Fight me on it, because it's important to you that something, even this one thing (like, what, again? I'd love to hear your altrustic bullshit) (Oops, I meant your altrustic 'cause' ... yeah, whatevs), that being gay-rights or human-rights or digging a well or feeding the poor or making money or looking good or not looking bad.

That's what it all descends to: you want to look good, and, well: above all else, not look bad.

To whom? To what end?

So that when you die, they can say about you: well, she looked good, and she didn't look bad.

Think about it. The end. Think about it.

Because 2400 years from now, your drive to make it to work on time and pretend to look like you know what your doing, by hiding, or by appearing smart, or by bullying, ....

2400 years from now they are not going to think two seconds about what you worked so hard, wasting your entire day, your entire life over.

They won't even know your name.

They won't even care.

Even Qoheleth, poor Qoheleth. I mean, it's taken to this last century before even the best and brightest philosophers have even begun to touch on this point. And they are still getting it only partially right. I mean, even Qoheleth knew that it was all pointless, and he knew that it was all pointless was ... pointless.

You don't know that. If you did, you wouldn't be 'yeah, right, whatevs,' because that's passive aggression, and you wouldn't be like 'yeah, but `phfina, ....'

There is no 'yeah, but...' there's no exceptions to the clause, even the clause itself, and until you get all the way down to the bottom of the pyramid of turtles and find the big, fat elephant ... I mean 'emptiness' there ('there' being 'nowhere' and 'everywhere') then you haven't even started to grasp how completely idiotic you are trying to argue with me from reason that there meaning in this meaningless thing, this meaningless everything.

This meaningless nothing.

Go to the very bottom of the beer bottle, and see the emptiness there.

That's you.

Until you accept that ...

... Until you accept that, you are one very sad fuck. Trying to see meaning, hope, redemption, reason in anything and everything you hold onto so tightly to.

So, let go?

Let go of what? You're still not getting it. You're holding onto nothing!

Get it?

No, you don't. And don't try. You know why? Because 'trying' is adding your layer, your view, your context over all the excuses you've made to make yourself all nice, safe and secure in a world that has none of those things.

You're got a huge pile of shit on the plate in front of you (literally! you know what animal feed is composed of? Look it the fuck up) and instead of calling shit, shit, you paste all your reasonableness over it, like icing, and now you have a shit cupcake.

'But it's a cupcake now,' you reason to yourself as you heartily dig in, every single day, for the rest of your life, living this lie you call 'life' and 'that's how it is.'

'I can't tell my mom I'm gay,'

'I'm on my way to work now at 6:15 am'

'I wonder if he likes me...'

'God, I need that drink...'

You don't even stop, anymore, to ask yourself 'why?' You've graduated from being a rebellious teenager. You're grown up now (context), you have responsibilities (context), and ... and all that shit you tell yourself all the time, and you don't even buy it, you just do it because you have to do it, but why? you can't even dare to ask yourself why, because if you dare ...

... *gasp* if you dare to ask yourself why, you might actually come up with the real reason.

The real reason being, there is no sanctuary!

Yup, you're doing it all, sweetheart, because, just because, ogod, you tell yourself you have to, and for no other reason than that.

None.

Really. We had a doctor in group, and she saved a ten-year-old girl's life.

So, but, good, great, whatever, so that girl could live a few more years and do what?

What is it with us and 'doing'? We all need an occupation, but for what?

Sweetie, we all need ... need... to be doing something, anything, saving a ten-year-old girl's life, because ....

... because we have to fill the emptiness with something.

Otherwise we'd be faced with emptiness. Which would mean we would have to face it.

Or do what I do.

Run from it, with all my might.

And then face it again, the next morning, every morning, and look into her eyes, and see absolutely nothing there.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing in my eyes looking back at me.

You're still not getting it.

It's okay. I have to tell myself that, because after all, it doesn't matter whether you get it or not ... in the end.

Why does it matter to me then?

Or, put another way, when I was a little girl, growing up in a nowhere town in Connecticut, I would always wait for the part of the homily our Monsignor gave when he said, 'So, then what are we to do?' or as the Apostle Paul says 'So, then, how shall we live?'

Or as Qoheleth says, 'What, then, are we to do? Eat, drink, and be satisfied with the work of our hands.'

It's all pointless. So be happy.

That's it.

No, really: that's all, so if you're not happy doing your pointless thing, why bother?

But what's happy?

Hm, there's the rub, but then, that doesn't matter. Happy is whatever you want it to be.

Really.

So if you're happy sitting at work, doing nothing, stealing a pad of paper and some pens, well, then, have at it.

But, you really, really, really have to look. 'Have to' as in 'have to.'

Because, really, you can see that you're not happy.

Because why? Because you choose you and your life.

So happiness, `phfina, is my choice?

Yuppers.

So, it's all pointless, and the only meaning in it all is what you assign it.

And, well, for most people, they need a point, you know those kinds of people I'm talking about: always having a fucking point to their fucking 'oh, I was just asking a question!' conversations? Those people who are always carrying a chip on their shoulders the size of what I hear the WTC used to be.

You know: you.

So, ... (ooh, did I hit a nerve? So sorry. No, I'm not. *snicker* I'm having FUN!) ... if you have to have a point, well, then, have a fucking point.

Make a game of it.

Wake up in the morning, and, if you're honest, say, 'what-fucking-ever, it's all pointless,' and if you're not, (really) put on a (chipper) smile, and say, 'today, the point is ...'

And make one up.

And it really doesn't matter what it is, just make one up, and make a game of it.

'Today the point is to make seven people smile,' and then make seven people smile, and check back with yourself at the end of the day, and if you made seven people smile, then Yay! you won, and do your happy dance.

(I actually do do a happy dance. You should see it. Guaranteed to make you smile ... or snort coca-cola up your nose, and that would make me smile, ... either way, I win)

And if you didn't win your game, then Yay! you lost, and do your happy dance.

No really, remember? It doesn't matter. It's all a game. All of it, and you choose to play and and you choose how to be while you're playing it.

'The point today is to sleep in somebody's arms tonight.'

Remember to do your happy dance. And when you explain why to her, she'll either smile, or ... slap you in the face, which will make me smile.

Either way, I win.

Yup, I set myself up to win my games.

I'm hard enough on myself already, and for no (good) reason, too. So I deserve to win some, just because and for the smile.

So, cool, once you get that, that it's all a game, and it's a game you made up that you're playing, ...

Then that's the first step.

To what? Nothing, of course.

Wanna get better at it?

I walked home tonight, as I did every night.

You know, I choose to exist.

Right now.

Right now.

And right now.

Every single step is a step I made, because I chose it.

The steps I knew I was choosing?

Those were some incredible steps.

You're not even aware you're alive, are you?

You're not even aware you're taking this very breath, right now, I bet.

(My game. I just won. And when you do become aware of the breath you're breathing? When you become aware of yourself in your body at this very instant? Now that's a bigger game for me that I'm winning.)

Every second of every day is a choice you are making, right now, to be alive, and, in being alive, you're making choices, a multitude of them, to make a difference, to be the difference, or to go with the flow.

It's really comfy to go with the flow.

Particularly when you choose to pretend to not be aware that is what exactly what you are doing.

I know.

I know it a lot.

It's called 'work' because, up to now, it's what I choose to make what 'work' is.

But, you, me, when we become aware of being alive, at the very instant, and making a choice, this very instant.

The world becomes something else entirely.

It's called scarcity verses abundance.

People who chose to limit themselves, to live in the world they created within their safe little boundaries live in the world of me-verses-you, in the world of either-or, in the world of causality, 'if I do this, then she'll think that.'

Maya, illusion.

People who choose to be aware, and to be aware of choosing, ...

Well, then, they have everything, and more. Because why? Because they chose it, and they damn well know it.

And that, too, is maya.

So choose your illusion, even your transcendent illusion, as if I, or the gods, give a fuck what importance you assign to your altruism.

So you play a game, and you are (self-)aware twice a day (when you make the game and when you win or assess your game), and that's great.

Step up your game.

Become aware of getting up for the day. Become aware of choosing to jog because you want to choose to jog.

Become aware of yourself and your body in the shower. Become aware of you choosing to put on your panties.

You choose it all. That's very freeing.

So is choosing not to put on your ...

Well, I'll leave that experiential knowledge for you to find out....

I will say it's very ... liberating, and you become so much more aware of ... well, everything, when you're so ... um, ... 'liberated.'

*ahem*

;)

*blush*

Or, play the game of 'self-awareness' of 'choosing the "right" path for you' ...

... because we're all so concerned about you and your problems.

@_@

I do it. I do it everyday. I do it right now. I choose to look in the mirror, and beat the shit out of myself, everyday. I choose that.

Because it makes me a better person? For what again?

It's all vanity!

So you choose to be self-aware. Are you? Great! You win. Do your happy dance!

How come people who embark on the journey of self-awareness never do a happy dance while on the journey? And if it's a journey, where's the end of it? And if there's no end to the self-awareness journey, then what's the point?

*snicker*

Geddit?

Hey, look, take your self-awareness journey seriously, if you wanna, but, you know, it's your game that you chose, so you may as well be happy doing it, amirite?

Honey, I love you. You ... look: you are perfect, as you are, right now, and if you weren't, how could I possibly love you? I demand nothing but perfection from you, because I so demand it from me.

You wanna measure up? You measure up.

So there.

Oh, and one more thing:

Unplugged

So.

Okay.

I bust on the metro line to get to work, and of course, on the metro train, what are there? People, right?

Not really. What's on the metro train, are people, yes, but people consumed by ... anything distracting. It's like a picture right out of Fahrenheit 451, everybody on the train, listening to their iPods, reading their iBooks, doing anything to fill the time ... and people thought Ray Bradbury wrote science fiction.

Well, everybody except one person.

Me.

I decided, paradoxically, to ... unplug. I decided to take this time to, well: collect myself before I went into work, and look out the window, and see cars and trees passing by, and look in the car and see people, and see what they are doing.

Me ... and somebody else.

There was a girl.

She was ... maybe ten years old, seated next to her mother, her mother who was engrossed in her iPhone, but she wasn't. She ...

She had long auburn hair, curled near the tips because of this oppressive heat and humidity, bronzed skin, and crystal blue eyes that stared right into your soul ...

... Right into my soul.

She had a decided air. An air of a girl, so strong, so beautiful, so smart, knowing that she was head and shoulders above everybody on the train, in the whole damn country, in fact.

What will happen to this girl, I wondered.

I mean: who's going to be the lucky guy who gets her? And will he be strong enough to handle her, even for one day, when she grows up and comes out into the world?

Or, will she even make it? Will she see the world, and all its absurdity and ... and do what? Know that there's nothing she can to to change it? So remove herself from the equation? A world so set in its ways, everybody obliviously listening to their iwhatevers, trapped inside a train as it speeds off the edge of the cliff, and not caring one whit because their senses are filled with meaningless drivel? Hopeless to change a world without hope?

Or will she play the game? See the world for what it truly is, and laugh at it, and put a boy under her thumb and make him the president of IBM or Microsoft or of the United States of America, and run the country from the sidelines by proxy (because she knows nobody ever listens to a woman)? Or say 'Hell with it,' and build her own empire from scratch, and fight and fight and fight, and force a world to be the way she wants it to be?

Why did I even bother even asking that last question?

And that was the look on that girl's face: why am I even bothering?

She looked around disdainfully at all of us, all so engrossed in filling our time and our minds with trivia, and read us, and the world, and shrugged.

And she saw me. She saw me, seeing her.

So I looked away. I tried not to blush. I 'didn't' look at her again. I mean, she was always in my peripheral vision, so I saw her, surveying the world and its vanity.

And I wondered. Does she wonder what it'll be like for her? I mean, she knows what it is now for her ...

GOD! she's so mature, for such a slim, elfin, young girl, elegantly dressed in tailored blue jeans and bejeweled flip-flops, so refined.

It's like as if she's given up on her childhood, or has had it stolen from her.

So I wondered if she wondered what it was like to be me, at my age, with my responsibilities, and was pining to skip past all this ... 'stuff' ... when she's not allowed to do anything of her own, but she knows she's already far more capable to handle any- and every-thing thrown her way, and so much better than anybody else in the train car.

As you see, I don't wonder what it's like to be her .. I mean, I don't pine for it ... to be a young girl again, going into high school and dealing with all my bullshit friends with their bullshit problems ... homework? what other people think of you?

As if any of that had any weight in the matter.

I don't miss that age.

No: I am missing what that age could've been for me ... where I could've been just a girl, a smart girl, a sweet girl, a beautiful girl, and where mommy could've held me if things got too complicated and I could've been a girl that could've asked mommy to hold me, or mommy could've just known, and just held me, even as I screamed and fought her embrace, and cried and cried and cried at all the meaningless of it all, and the weightiness of it. I could've been that girl who ... lived ... and smiled and was happy, and when she wasn't, cried, and was held.

I miss that. I did miss it, entirely, in fact.

And, ... I think this girl, in front of me, so self-possessed, is missing it, too.

So I pray for her ... that maybe she'll wake up from her ... knowing everything about everybody and seeing the vanity of it all, knowing that she's better than, and so being forced to be better than, because she knows it. I pray that she can just let it all go, some time, maybe all the time, and be a young, sweet, beautiful girl, who can break out into a smile, ... despite it all, or who can cry, in spite of it all, and reach out to be held, and be held, and loved.

I'm talking about the girl on the train ... I mean the girl I saw on the train.

I'm not talking about the girl in the mirror.

Really.

... *sigh* oh, well, ... another day.

Granola nut

So, another entry in `phfina cookbook — granola:

• 2 cups old-fashioned Quaker oats (although Amish oats could work, too, I guess)
• 1 cup almonds, chopped
• ½ cup honey
  
• 1 cup (cran)raisins
  

1. Preheat oven to 400°F
2. Roughly, lightly chop almonds (if they are chopped too fine, they burn ... I know @_@)
3. Mix almonds and Quaker/Amish/Unitarian oats on a cooky sheet, toast in oven until toasted, not burnt (like my first time) ... 10 minutes or so should (over)do it.
4. While toasting the Presbyterian oats, heat honey in pan, bring to a boil (I'm fo' realz here: really boil it)
5. Remove almonds/oats from oven, remove honey from heat. Quickly mix in the toasted Heavenly oats (that you didn't burn the Hell out of, geddit? Heavenly/Hell? *sigh*) into the honey, add the (cran)raisins. Mix until completely assimilated (like the Borg, but not)
6. Press mixture into a pie pan. And when I say 'press,' I mean press! so that it's all smooshed together, smooth and completely flattened and fills the pie tray.
7. Let cool for a while. Eat, every morning, by slicing out a `phfina-sized wedge. Leave time, after, in your morning routine for ... you know ... because they keep you regular. *ahem*

You like? I could write my own recipe book. That way I'd sound all grown up. A grown woman: me! `phfina! :D

I do sound like a grown woman, don't I? Or am I not even fooling you? :(

I would wonder if grown women wonder if they are grown women, but I already know that isn't true. Grown women don't wonder that. They don't have time to: I've watched them, I've heard about them, ... but I don't see them in the mirror. Grown women sternly shepherd their children from place to place: soccer club, the Cornish Pasty shop, the Memorial Day parade in the (sun)burning hot sun, never thinking of themselves and their tired feet, but watching over their brood like hawks and rolling their eyes at their husbands. Grown women cook supper of matzo ball soup for their sick kids, vomiting all over the place, neverminding the fact that they want to puke too: they just bear down, cook the soup, clean up the messes, the puke, that is, and comfort their crying babies to sleep, then do the laundry before dropping of, heavily, to sleep next to their snoring husbands.

Grown women have exactly 2 minutes 37 seconds to have a microburst conversation with their friend on the phone, and all the while, their children are tugging at their skirts, moaning: 'Mo-o-o-o-o-om-m-m-m-m!' and rolling their eyes at their grown women mommies so embarrassing them and when can they play on their mom's phone is the real question.

Grown women don't wonder if they are grown women. They simply are. They aren't little babies pretending to be independent because they haven't (yet) been kicked out of their apartment, because they just made rent payment, again, and published a silly little recipe to show the world, "Look, mommy, I'm a grown woman, I can write a recipe that is just one step above 'cold cereal and milk'!"

I do wonder, sympathetically, if grown women ever wish they were little babies, like me, again. But I know that's not possible ... for either of us: grown women, all grown up and mature, handling everything the world throws at them with grace, dignity, and hard, hard work, just like my Nana did, to her last day,

... and little babies, like me.

Useless ... and bleah!

Happy Easter, everyone!

So, Fr. P. on Black Thursday (I'm Catholic, just go with my terms, okay?) heard my confession: you know, where I admitted I hadn't been going to confession in two months and I had been receiving Holy Communion all that time to show everybody that everything was fine with me, ...

... when really it wasn't.

I mean, sure, I kept to my Lenten observance, giving up what I could handle to give up: drinking, ...

... But wasn't I supposed to be closer to God, doing this Lenten stuff?

I wasn't.

I was simply annoyed that I couldn't drink, so I cussed more and masturbated, ... well, more of the same, 'cause I don't think it's humanly possible to masturbate more than me ('more than me'? or 'more than I do'? I think 'more than I do' is ... 'more' correct ... geddit? 'more correct'? *sigh* you don't get it)

At this point Fr. P. interrupted me and asked me how many times I masturbated? 'Was it once a day?'

I had to stop myself from screaming with laughter at that.

And after I had (politely) corrected him, he told me that my will had been corrupted by this bad habit (that feels so good) and that I needed to get on a regular confession schedule, so that when I fell, my confessor could restore me to grace and I could again worthily receive the sacraments.

See? Nothing judgmental there, just mercy and forgiveness and a plan to get things right.

Why can't I be like that?

Anyway, Easter Sunday rolls around, and my pretty nieces in their pretty pink and peach dresses (killer!) sang in the choir, and Fr. P. steps up to the lecturn and welcomes everybody and says this Mass is ...

... 'useless.'

He said all you teenage girls coming to Mass to prove to your parents that, yep, you still go to Mass, Mom and Dad, so leave me alone, okay?

(He didn't look directly at me when he said this ... but there were three killer teens in their form-fitted jeans and oh-so-snug turtlenecks with super-model pouty lips that I wanted to savage because of their crossed-arm 'tude they carried with them into the church ...)

(... there's something here about motes and beams[1] that I may be missing here ...)

And Father went on and on about how 'useless' Jesus' sacrifice was and how 'useless' the Mass was, and how 'useless' love is and ...

It was around this point I wanted to punch Father in the face if he were going to say the word 'useless' again without coming round to the point on Easter Sunday with a standing-room-only-filled-to-capacity church.

Anger issues much, `phfina?

No, why do you ask? *blink-blink*

And his point, that he eventually got to after saying 'useless' three more times (no, I didn't punch him in the face three times ... I didn't even punch him in the face once ... barely ... I was so proud of my self-control as I sat fuming in my pew) (with my pretty white dress on ... you should've seen me. 'Killer!' But then, if you saw me, you'd grab me away to the bathroom in the back of the church that smells like camomile lotion and done naughty non-Easter things to me, and I would've missed the homily, see?)

:p

Where was I? Oh, yeah: 'useless.'

And Fr. P.'s point was this: Jesus' sacrifice was useless, and the Mass was useless, and human love is useless, because ...

Because Jesus, in sacrificing himself, wasn't using us. We, in celebrating the Mass, don't use Him. Perfected human love, selfless love, the love where the grandfather gets grandmother's meds and a glass of water for her, without asking nor being asked, just because he loves her and knows (I was almost crying there), is not using.

'Useful', something being 'used,' is to be consumed. You love hamburgers, Fr. P. said, and a cow has to die. But God loves us, we love God and each other, and we don't consume each other, not in perfect love.

How different perfect love is from ... well, anything of this Earth, at any time: in Jesus' time, and now, where the sexual revolution hasn't liberated women, it's only liberated sexual predators, so now they can use woman as a receptacle to rub against and to piss in, justifying their self-gratification because now there's no fruit of their consummation: there's no longer any need for it.

Wanna debate that? Look at the poverty line. Look at where, and who the poverty line has hit hardest, with the 'no-fault' divorce that allows men to walk away from their word, their commitment to their families, leaving the wife, and children, in poverty, so now you take oral contraception, the pill, so you don't get pregnant, so a guy can fuck you then leave you that same night, leaving the emotional turmoil, the wreck, that used to be you, behind, and that's okay now, because you're supposed to 'man' up and not have all those womanly attachments, like love for another person who consummated his 'love' for you, but, no, not really, because you're just a cum-dump now, and that's okay.

Yeah, that's what human love has been corrupted to nowadays.

But Fr. P. concluded, when you discover Jesus, you discover the death and resurrection, and when you discover that, you discover everything good in this life.

It's Easter Monday. Lent is over. Back to being the old `phfina. Scared little me working on a window ledge, because they don't have a desk for me and three other of my coworkers.

'Useless.' It's a theme I've thought about a lot, as a writer, how authoresses write their characters to use each other: Edward rapes Bella and then forces her to have an abortion, but Bella's a cunt for crying about it. Edward and Bella have sex and Edward leaves Bella, and Bella has to pick up the pieces of her life with her daughter that looks just like Rosalie and Edward comes back when Bella's thirty, but everything's okay, because Bella didn't kill herself so Edward can ... well, pick up where he left off, with a daughter with a lot of anger issues about an absent father. But, like I said, it's all good.

Or, Bella is in college and meets the real Vampire Edward, who like killing women because they're weaker and scream so beautifully as he kills them, but he falls for Bella, because she's Mary Sue, see? And, since the sex is top-notch, and Bella is a sensitive, caring soul (like I said, Mary Sue), and they quote Sartre to each other, then it's one of those 10,000+ reviewed stories, see, because it's not about the sex, nor the murders, it's about getting it and getting with it because this is Sartre so it's cool and trendy and in.

Look who's talking, `phfina.

I write some sex scenes that are top-notch, and quote Ayn Rand, and dwell on the meanifullessness of it all, how we are all just consumers, users, ... but ...

But, so I'm just like everybody else, just another user ...

The Mass? Useless?

Maybe, maybe not. I don't know.

I do know one thing. I do know one thing.

Useless? Me.

Sitting here, on my window ledge, correcting my spreadsheet, again, because somebody else got in there and overwrote a formula with a number they hand-entered and now everything's fucked up, but who cares? Nobody, ... nobody but nobody me.

If I killed myself, today, right now, the only thing that would matter is that some people would have to clean up the mess I made on the floor, because my boss? He came by at exactly 9:30 am to make sure everything was 'okay' (trans: that I had my ass in my chair on the window ledge) and that's all he knows about me and my job. That's how much I matter.

Now I have to go to a 10:00 am meeting, to prove that they are cutting a paycheck to somebody who's occupying space at least 8 hours a day, consuming oxygen.

Maybe I'll drink some liquid oxygen, for all that it matters, for all that they care.

And Jesus died and rose again for this, God's one mistake.

"And on that day it would've been better that he be not born."

I don't even rate that verse, that's what a waste I am. Instead of carrying forward the family name, I was born with a little slit. An unwanted pregnancy, an unwanted child, now just a cog in the wheel on a window ledge.

I might as well jump.

... setting: much later in the day, at home, in bed, under covers, shivering and sweating.

Well, you pray to God for a reason to live, and He gives you one. My niece got the stomach flu on Easter, and now I have it, too. Had some orange juice and got really queasy! *sigh* So now I have to get better before I slump into the black pit of despair, 'cause that's how I roll. Can't have my mom asking the coroner after I've slit my wrists ('down, not across'), did I have clean panties, and if not, why not.

Can't have that.

---

[1] "Wherefore thou correctest thy brother, that he hast a mote in his eye, when thou seest not the beam in thine own, ... blah-blah-blah, and stuff" (Queen `phfina's neuf translation of King James' vieiux one)

"Turn Me On, Dammit!"

They made a movie about me:

trailers-dot-apple-dot-com-slash-trailers-slash-independent-slash-turnmeondammit

That's all that post was going to be, but, well, it's a lovely day, so why not ruin it more? That's all I'm good at, so here goes.

OF COURSE they would come out with an indie move about angst from Angst-central that is the Great Northern Old World, and, please, look at the girl, isn't she perfect. She is just so oh-my-god so fuckingly (and fuckingably) (or is it 'fuckabling'?) beautiful, especially when she puts that flower in her hair, and goes on the prowl, that half the girls in the world would give their right arm to be her and the other half (actually 5%) would want to do her.

Do her good, long and hard.

Like I said, a movie about me.

But then, how does she see herself? Look at her when she looks at herself. Do you see how her face becomes sallow and haggard?

She thinks she's ugly.

No, worse: she thinks she's undesirable.

No, worst: she thinks she's unlovable.

(Doesn't fucking help that every single person in that export from Norway is Nordic, and yes, Saga isn't Norwegian, and she isn't even Swedish, except by relocation, or maybe she's is properly half Swedish, but I don't remember any more, and I can't ask her, ... actually I can, and expect the same donut-hole responses I've been getting)

(But no response from Saga is better to me, a bittersweet drink, than anything I have before me in my empty and meaningless life, so I hold onto her silence as if it were the only lifeline I have ... had ... have, because at least I have her silence).

Like I said. Angst.

They did get one thing wrong: phone smex. And the bills for it. As if I could afford that.

Besides, why buy the cow, when the lactatio-... I meant: 'milk' *blush* is free? There's the internet for that. All day, every day.

Except at work. Can't get fired.

Besides (part deux) phone smex is so personal ... intimate, even! ... okay, here's how phone smex for `phfina would go down.

Ring-ring: please enter your account number or press star to enter your credit card information for a new account

(`phfina enters her account information, for the 500th time this week)

'Hello,' says a sweet, friendly voice, 'my name is Kristile, what's yours?'

(`phfina shrieks and hangs up, blushing hard, just like the past 500 times, and runs from her flat to the nearest pub, I mean: 'hide-y hole')

At the end of the month, they find a what they identify as a preteen girl in an apartment she was squatting, dead, with a credit card bill for $3,000 clutched in her left, that is, her non-knife hand.

I think I'm going to love that movie, when it finally comes out on youtube in "Part 1 of 10" segments, because, really, who wants to see a movie about a sad girl with no happy ending when there's the multibillion dollar happily-ever-after franchises, like Twilight ... THAT'S reality: self-conscious girl, awkward, lands ultra-rich-cute-powerful boy and gets deus ex machina powers AND, for fuck's sake, a perfect in every way daughter who hits preteens right away and is just so adoring and adorable there's nothing at all to hate or be frustrated about with her.

THAT'S reality, so why watch a teenage angst movie, and told from a girl's perspective at that?

She probably commits suicide at the end. Because: labeled a slut? ostracized so much that her best friend leaves her to hang out with a nice guy?

Where have a lived, I meant: 'heard', that before? Hm.

Now, I'm terrified to write they made another movie about me:

trailers-dot-apple-dot-com-slash-trailers-slash-independent-slash-godblessamerica

Because it's been like, what, at least three times that people PM me and are like, 'Are you like a 40-year-old pervy guy'?

And I'm like, what?

I mean, seriously! Do they see me as this guy?

trailers-dot-apple-dot-com-slash-trailers-slash-independent-slash-badass

Last I checked, Machete slashed a lot, but he didn't have that little tiny slash that I have down there when I check my birthday suit in the mirror.

Mirror time. Fun-fun.

Seriously, three times a girl comes to me, opens up, and then says am I a stalker perv?

Did you get the part where they came to me, I didn't go to them and say, 'diddle yourself while you tell me your fantasies of me fucking you'? No, they came to me, and opened up, and I tried, God, I tried to tell them they are lovable, and give them some self-meaning, and -worth, and -confidence, but somehow I'm the stalker because they're a fucked-up psycho bitch?

Fucking psycho bitches.

Please, do me a favor, and fuck off, fucked up psycho bitches.

You can get hurt on-line. I have, but not for being called something I'm not.

I got hurt, badly, for being called something I am.

It was, somebody ... who saw this shy, scared girl, and made a tiger trap for me, and baited it well, and when I fell into that trap, and had nowhere to turn and nowhere to run to hide, she said: "I know who you are."

And she told me.

Another time I almost committed suicide.

Why do people JUST. HAVE. TO. KNOW?

"Are you an alcoholic?"

"Do you have a mental disorder?"

And then the killing me softly with kindness, telling me what and who I am, putting me in my place, under her domination and control, so she would be safe, because there's somebody (much, much) weaker, more vulnerable than her, and she's seen these weaknesses before, and knew exactly how to exploit them.

No, I'm afraid of mentioning 'God bless America,' not because I'm a rampaging murderous fourty year old pervy man (please!). No, it's because I am that teen girl, outcast, with that really, really weird twisted outlook on life, who is this close to pulling a gun on the guy who double-parked, but did she, no.

What she did was smile, evilly, and pat our anti-hero on the arm, affectionately, encouraging the behavior on him which that sweet little innocent her would never dream of acting out on.

That's why I'm afraid of mentioning that movie, because you see me as brave, and strong, trying to work through my shit, when, actually, I'm not working through the shit, I'm not in the shit.

I am the shit.

I'm a little vicious, conniving, nihilistic, evil shit.

Special place in hell, reserved just for me, the anti-elect.

Those two movies got one thing wrong ... about me, and so right about girls these days.

No matter how low these girls, these anti-heroines have sunk, they ...

They still have self-worth, pride, and bravery or courage. They can flip off their town, because they know they hate it.

Me? My life? I grew up in Middletown, CT, 'Little Italy', an outsider, by definition, but I didn't know I hated that little town where there was no way I could fit in. I didn't know anything. That's just the way things were, and that's just the way my life is.

These girls? They have the guts to subscribe to a phone-smex line to help take care of bizness, they have the guts to go up to a 40-year-old perv watching school girls through binocs to say, 'Isn't that a little lame to get your rocks off, you perv?' and then when he offs the class princess-bitch-cvnt, she has the guts not wet herself and fall into a quivering teary pile, lying the whole time saying, 'That's not right,' and 'you're so mean, how could you do that!' when deep in her heart she felt her panties get wet watching him off that vicious bitch who picked on and belittled her her whole school life.

No, she has the guts to smile, and say, 'That is the coolest thing I have ever seen. Can I come with you?'

And get in his car and throw her useless, pointless, predetermined life away and walk into an unknown, carefree, exciting future and actually live.

Do you see why I'm terrified?

Nah, you don't. You just feel sorry for fucked up little me, that I can live my fucked up little life that everybody else is just fine living ('quiet lives of desperation'), and I can't ...

I can't go on.

Yes, I can.

How do people do it? How do people just keep going on, and are actually happy and content with what they have? It's like a gift, isn't it? Did everybody else get the manual, and they forgot to give it to me, because I missed out on 'How to have vaginal and anal intercourse with a male and enjoy it, even though he cums in like, 30 seconds, and you never will' manual on how to live your life happily and contented even though there's better and you had it for a while and then it's all gone, twice.

TWICE. Twice I've lost the best friend and lover in the world that I knew I would never have on my own merit, and now I have to settle for ...

So now I have this Big Scarlet letter, ... not 'A', for 'Adulteress' (been there, done that), but 'S' for 'Settle for', so now every person who comes to me sees that 'S' and knows what she is, 'Oh, I'm just what `phfina's settling for'

And what does that say to her about her? And what does that say about me, that I'm living my life in the past with my regrets, knowing I don't deserve what I had had, so judging everything, even better things, as not measuring up, and measuring up to what? What I had when I can't see beauty, and kindness, and sweetness and love right in front of me, because all I have in my guts (which we have establish that I don't have guts) is anger and the only taste left in my mouth is bitterness?

----

I've been looking for the king of diamonds
But I guess the queen will do
I've been looking for the king of diamonds
Till the dealer gave me you

You've got everything together
You've got everything I want
You've got sharp & sparkling pleasure
Even from the middle of your card

"King of Diamonds," sung by Motopony

... but what does that make me? That's easy:

You are just a stranger,
With your vodka soda.
Under the street light.
You were a silhouette.
Cigarette.

You look, You look like trouble.
You look like beautiful trash.
You look, look so holy through the smoke
And the ash of beautiful trash.

"Beautiful Trash," performed by Lanu

That's what it makes me, a pretty little girl with nothing to recommend her than her beautiful girlish looks, her beautiful insights, and that she tries, oh, she tries so hard!

Yeah, I'm a try-hard.

Hm, I wonder if cigarette smoke clears the nose, throat, and lungs of all the snot I'm carrying in me.

You know, clear my head. Just like my Pepe did, when I was a little baby, one, two years old.

He went to his garage shed one pre-dawn morning, took a gun, and cleared his head, with a smok(ing bullet).

Nana found him. Something felt wrong. So she ran to the garage, and found him there. Cold, pale. Dead.

Just like me.

8th day of Lent (a Rant)

WARNING: This isn't going to pretty, and there's no redemptive, cathartic moment.

Do you know what really pisses me off?

Yeah, `phfina! the crowds, in ecstasy, cheer, what really pisses you off?

Well, okay, since you're so insistent in your demands, I'll tell you. What really pisses me off is ...

Food.

Look, okay, I haven't been hungry, at all, in a while, but, no, I can't be caught not eating because ...

... and no I don't suffer from anorexia, thank you for your concern ...

... Just because. Because everybody eats, and don't you want to be like everybody?

Yes, I do. @_@

What's wrong with you, `phfina?

Look, I don't have all week to get into that, so let's stay on the topic at hand.

Okay, so I had a bowl of cereal and an omelet yesterday morning. Healthy breakfast, yes, and 2 pm rolls around, and I'm still not hungry, at all ... but, I gotta eat, because I gotta eat, otherwise, people will notice.

And we can't have that.

SO, I go down to the cafeteria and get a roast beef sandwich, ...

And here it comes, ladies and gentlemen,

And I bite into the thing, and ... nothing.

It had NO taste whatsoever! And you know why?

Why, `phfina! Why!

I'll tell you why! Because it was processed from source to consumer, that's why.

Look, okay, I'm not a health food nut, okay? I'm not a granola girl, but by God, this kind of food is turning me into one.

What kind of food, you ask?

(`phfina waits for you to ask, you give me that 'asking' look, which I'll have to settle for, I suppose)

This kind of food: Amerkan kind of food.

I mean the bread: meh.

But the roast beef? It was probably cornfed and factory processed, the poor cow, so it probably had more carbs than the bread did, pound for pound, because it was absolutely tasteless, and then the sandwich, heavy on the carbs, had one tomato slice.

Let me tell you about the tomato slice. I looked at it.

Can anyone spell HGH for me?

Jesus-God! I could actually see the bubbles of nitrogen quick-expand it into 'maturity'? No not that, because it was red-dye colored! SO OBVIOUSLY so that it was a grey-green red.

There was absolutely nothing nutritive in that tomato. NOTHING!

That sandwich.

God!

That sandwich exemplifies one side of the equation of: give the people ('cattle' or 'rabble') what they want.

Absolutely bland, absolutely tasteless, with enough high-corn-syrup energy to get the 'fuck-me-up-the-ass, boss' secretary through her utterly bland, faceless, boring day, another day in her pointless life as a consumer who's job it is to keep Corporate Food America so deep in profits they ...

... I can't come up with a witty analog as my mind has been stulified into submission. 'Must consume more empty calories!'

The other side of the equation is this: 'Oh, you want to taste your food? We'll put some taste (salt and sugar) in your food!'

You go to restaurant these days and you can actually brush off the salt encrusting every item of food fast-food served to you.

And why?

Why, `phfina!

Thank you.

You know where restaurants make all their money?

The drinks.

Do you know how much it costs to produce a glass of Coke(™)? With — get this — 5 TABLESPOONS of SUGAR! in EACH glass?

Less than a penny.

How much did you just spend for that drink with your meal?

Free refills? FUCK the free refills. The refills are FREE for THEM!

Do you know what it costs ME for you to get your free refills?

Diabetes, kidney and liver failures leading to insulin shots, and medical emergency procedures (operations, dialysis, and what-all else) that I have to pay for with money I DON'T have in my company-'sponsored' health insurance 'premiums'!

'Pre' as in 'pre'-shock before I die looking at how much we are all paying for the sum total of this world-wide now epidemic of gluttony of the senses.

Oh, but we're not at a restaurant, ... we're at an Irish pub now, being served what?

Fried fish and chips, of course.

And beer. And beer. And whiskey with the beer.

When I go out to eat, I want to drink, and drink and drink.

Do you know how much it costs to produce a bottle of beer? The beer company owned by ... wait for it:

Frito-Lay and the Coca-cola company.

Don't believe me? Look it up by tracing the chain of holding companies to the source company.

It costs about the same to produce a can of beer as it does to produce a can of coke (or 'Coke(™)') (they are as equally addictive anyway, so it doesn't matter which one you call it. I know, and more on that in a mo')

But how much did you just pay for that beer? $5? $6? $7? Or for the 'hand-crafted': $8, $9, or $10?

What the fuck is 'hand-crafted' beer that's been so mass-produced that it ends up right the fuck in front of you in a restaurant that buys it, along with a hundred other restaurants that buy it, to so conveniently serve you your fucking 'hand-crafted' beer?

Okay, real reason for writing this post.

I don't know if I'm supposed to say, but I'm going to Hell anyway, so what does it matter?

I gave up drinking booze for Lent.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I've been dry. And for a few days before Lent, because I didn't know I was gonna do this, so I didn't go Mardigras crazy, ...

... like I did with my other vices ...

for that.

I was going to go on a water-and-light-fast diet for Lent, and, for the light fast, I'm doing that, anyway, because why? Because I haven't been hungry for days.

Actually I think I'm sick...

And DON'T GO THERE on the 'yeah, we know you're a sicko, you crazy bitch,' this post isn't about that if if you want to read about that ... well, read any of my other posts...

... as I've lost my voice and stayed home today from work, not even getting up until 11 am, but guess how many calls and emails I got from HR and Payroll and Accounting about this, that, and other.

I mean, GOD! I'm gonna die someday, people, can't you do your jobs one day without my help?

But the water fast?

Here's where I'm back to the coke. Or Coke(™)

I went on a water fast Ash Wednesday.

And got a caffeine headache so bad it almost was a migraine.

Yes, I get migraines. Stress, don't you know.

So, I'm back on coffee and diet, DIET, cokes, but I ...

I can't taste the coke anymore.

I'm addicted. I've been trained to be a good little addicted consumer.

But, so, hm, how to salvage the unsalvageable?

Besides the 2012 Armageddon.

Listen, people, I'm gonna start packing my own lunches, and I don't care about the office talk about "oh, look at `phfina, she 'packs her own lunch'!" Gossip can subdue other people, but I sick of being a slave to Food, Inc.

And, really, folks, look at buying from ... idk ...

Okay, my nieces, they grow their own peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots, they gave me some.

You know what real pepper tastes like? It doesn't taste like airy cardboard. It tastes like pepper: sweet, juicy, delicious.

THAT's what real food tastes like.

They grow these things in their backyard, in 'Square-foot gardens' 2 feet by 3 feet. That's all the room you need to start getting your own health back!

Now for the drinking thing: I actually don't miss it. I actually didn't notice that I didn't miss it until I wrote this entry. It's like I psyche myself into thinking 'I need a drink' ...

Are you an alcoholic, `phfina?

Yes, thanks for asking. Do you feel better than me, knowing that you got me to say I'm an alcoholic?

'Are you an alcoholic?' You know, people who ask that question, all concerned, so that they can know you're an alcoholic, but then don't take the only next step, and put their whole life on the line to save you?

The can go FUCK THEMSELVES!

FUCK I want a drink so bad right now.

You know why I gave up drinking for Lent, even though I don't drink every day, and I don't need it, and all the other excuses I tell myself every day?

Because of Saga.

She read my entry, Party Girl, and you know what she did?

She became ... No, she is. She is a strong person. And she wouldn't let me get away with me shitting on myself.

She stood, and she asked me not to drink, because she loved me, and didn't want me to throw away my life, like she seen her sweet, smart friend do, and she did this when it was inconvenient, and impolite, and she got the sharp edge of my tongue.

But she did it, she put her life on the line, for me.

And what did I do?

'Eh, I don't have a problem.'

And kept drinking, sometimes. Well, continued to drink, okay?

So now ... eight days, no alcohol.

For you, Saga.

But why? We're not together anymore, right?

Saga. I love you, and I want you to see that I've 'moved on' and that I'm 'better.'

I have moved on. I try not to think about you every day so much, and hurt myself. And I'm 'better,' see? I'm not drinking now.

So, will you please move on, and be better? no, not better: Happy.

'Happy' in that you know you've done good and you are good. You've done the right things, made the hard choices, and now, ...

Now you have your life ahead of you, and I so, so desperately want you to be happy in the life you choose now.

Are you already, and you haven't written, because I'm a footnote, and there's nothing to say anymore? I hope so, God I hope so.

I hope it isn't that you can't write to me because you are hurting inside, that I hurt you, and all you think you'll get from me is spite, anger and recriminations. I have, and will always, admire, respect, and love you. You are a light to the world, Saga, you were my light, my reason for living when I had no reason for more than a year, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Please, Saga, know that. Know what you've done is good and right. Know that I admire, respect and love you.

8th day of Lent. No drinking. Not for me. I could care less about me. For you, Saga.

Now, as for the I'm going to Hell bit, that's a two-liner.

Anytime you put anything that you have to have in front of God, you're a goner.

I tried giving up coke, and my body just said nope.

I didn't even try to give up masturbation, a grievous sin, and thinking about not even trying to give that up has got me stripping in bathrooms and coming up with such lurid images that I've rubbed myself raw these last few days.

I am utterly hopeless and a lost, damned soul. It says it right there in the Bible, where Jesus, no, St. Paul says that's the worst sin, because the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and anything you do to yourself (and he mentions masturbation) to defile that temple is a direct sin against God.

And if God said, 'Don't masturbate for one day and you get a free pass into Heaven'? I'd be like, 'reverse-Lot' where I'd try to 'jew' him up? "When you say 'don't', God, is it okay if I do it just one time?" "How about two?" "Three?" "Five?" "Ten?"

... "Fifteen?"

"God, is it okay if I do it just fifteen times today, because just thinking about not doing it has got the endorphins going and, ... well, you know ... kitty needs pats!"

I am an addict. A slave to booze, coke, and kitty.

A modern day girl, a faceless consumer, right out of Atlas Shrugged.

And you hold out such hope from my redemption.

Silly you.