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.

... and the fourth marriage proposal ...

So, I just got my fourth marriage proposal on ffn.

But that's okay, because she was just kidding. Or she didn't know what she was saying. Or kids these days (or Americans these days) don't know what love and marriage is anymore, just look at the statistics, right, so no biggie, `phfina.

Right?

I've heard this before, particularly from my European friends, but love, to me, is love, and it's a phenomenon, that if even if somebody says, well, it isn't, they know, in their heart, that it is, and it is serious, and making light of it only makes it more serious, not less. So, maybe a review of epistemology may help your argument, because this is a track that many, many people have trod, including philosophers, so, as you think, you have many others who've thought over this, very diligently, to help you form, or to counter, your arguments.

'Love isn't love, marriage isn't marriage' doesn't work. If your statement held (F-logic allows paradox), and they weren't, why are you giving any thought to what isn't?

Cognitive sciences help there, too.

It comes down to accepting responsibility for what people say to you. Do you accept it, or belittle it? Empower them, and yourself, for taking them at their word, or use logic and reason (sophistry) to distance yourself and themselves from their words by draining them of their meaning, paradoxically, by using semantics to argue that a thing isn't what it is?

When you embark on that path, you embark on viewing people as things, as 'it' spouting nonsense, and not 'thou' speaking from the heart.

And either are valid views. One is entirely materialist, and I, and Martin Büber, take exception.

When someone makes you especially giddy? Don't you see that as something special, for them at least, and if so, why not for you? Because you don't want the entanglement, the complication of a relationship with depth and honesty?

But then if you don't want the consequence of another person feeling something because you've opened up to share something of yourself, then ...

Well the obvious alternative is not to share yourself, or to shut them down, hard when they do get giddy, by telling them: "oh, you're just feeling silly; you'll get over it."

Ouch.

So, go ahead, say: oh, they're young. They're a fangirl. They don't know what they're saying.

That helps me, dealing with a girl who's just broken down and told me she loves me, because I wrote something that touched her heart in a way nobody else has ever done, but you, you adult, mature, reasonable people, instead of acknowledging her fear and her feelings, say: 'get over it, grow up, little girl.'

Leaving another breaking heart, or, worse, another person who hardens their heart, vowing never to open themselves up again like that and get hurt, then get ridiculed for it.

Today is the day someone truly dared to live, and got on her knees, 'pretending' to tell me she loves me.

Please don't make today also the day she closes off her heart, regretting her own daring, and dies, just a little bit, just a lot, because that cold, cruel world actually is, and is actually populated by jaded, hard-hearted people who 'know better.' Please don't be one of those people who sees hope in a naïve, sweet, young, inexperienced girl, and crushes it aborning. Please don't make her one of those people.

Someone opened her heart today. Can you dare to open your heart to hers?

I love you.

kisses, `phfina

Grimasch om morgonen

Saga, Saga, Saga!

Each time I think your name, I die.

(and, yes, in the Shakespearian sense, too. You can look that up, sweetie)

Years ago...

YEARS ago, you gave me this song, "Grimasch om morgonen," by Cornelis Vreeswijk.

Do you know that every gift you gave me, your words, your looks, your love, I have treasured in my heart? Always?

Well, a while ago, something happened, and I thought I lost this song.

I thought I lost you.

I did, didn't I?

But, now, today, right now, I found the song again, and I've played it and played it and played it, and smiled, through my tears, remembering you and remembering me, with you.

I remembered how I sparkled and shined for you, and how I was your baby.

I still am your baby, Saga, but now I'm lost and confused and heartbroken, I don't think I sparkle or shine much anymore; I think I'm just here, and you're just there, and ...

... and that's that. The end.

Even as I don't let go.

Saga, you said you'd love me forever. No matter what. What is the what that ... did this?

Two songs I'm listening to "Strange & Beautiful (I'll Put A Spell On You)" by Aqualung, because you put a spell on me, sweetie, and I don't know how to take it off. And "I Really Want You" by James Blunt, because I really want you. I really, really do.

But ...

... well, it's Saturday. I guess I'll go to work, nothing else to do, ... or watch the latest Star Trek flick. I hear it's good.

I guess.

Come talk to me

The wretched desert takes its form, the jackal proud and tight
In search of you, I feel my way, though the slowest heaving night
Whatever fear invents, I swear it make no sense
I reach through the border fence
Come down, come talk to me

...

Ah please talk to me
Won't you please talk to me
We can unlock this misery
Come on, come talk to me

Peter Gabriel, "Come Talk to Me" Us

— `phfina commentary:

Okay, what are you doing? Why are you reading this post? Go! Go out and buy Peter Gabriel's CD Us (and while you're at it, get Lana Del Rey's Born to Die ... she wrote that album for us, girls; she really did).

I mean, okay: is that guy even human, or is he his name: an angel? There was not one false note on that entire album, so sad, so serious, so super-silly with his "Kiss that Frog" ...

Wait. Is 'kiss that frog' the same as kissing a 'python' because if it is ... okay: eww!

So: "Come Talk to Me." I mean, it starts beautifully, and stays that way: the (bag) pipes strike a mournful chord, and they never, ever stop, the continuous drone in the background of that entire song reminding us all of the hurt that is happening throughout the world, all the time.

And Peter offers a really stupidly simple solution to it all: "Come, take to me."

No, not: "Hear me while I tell you all the solutions to your problems, you idiot."

He didn't say "Listen to me." He said: "Come, talk to me."

And where are we coming from? We're coming from our wretched desert, where Jesus went off to be alone.

We're all alone, all of us so filled with our own pride, our own self-worth, just like that tight jackal, that we can't even hear what another person from the well of their loneliness is saying to us. We'd rather rip their throats out than sit down, look into their being, and listen to them.

But Peter, he reaches through that border-fence that we erect around ourselves, and begs us: "Ah, please, talk to me. Come on, come talk to me."

Sweetheart. You are hurting.

But talking to yourself, locking yourself up into your wretched desert and erecting that border-fence only feeds that hurt.

Please, talk to me. Come on, come talk to me.

I don't have answers ... I mean, I have tons of answers, all the time, and I'm damn sure I'm right, too, 'cause I'm a weak human being, too, so please forgive me my frailty ...

I don't have answers; I don't have help or relief from your pain. But I can reach out through that border-fence, and listen, and cry, hurting with your pain, and love you.

You are alone in this world. I know this feeling very well. Please, talk to me.

I love you.

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.

Sad

You would think, reading my entries, that I live a bleak existence, moving from sadness to sadness.

I'm not going to comment on your thought. :p *snicker*

But I will say ...

Okay, when somebody says, 'Oh, I'm not going to say anything about that, I'm too grande (like an sbux coffee size?) to descend to your level, but I will say ...'

Didn't they, with their 'but I will say,' just do exactly what they said they weren't going to do because they're not a cunt like you are (but they didn't call you a cunt, they just thought that of you so that makes them so superior to you, see?)?

Anyway, but I will say ... @_@

So, me, C, and Max where in the matchmaking hopper, getting ready to show some bks how to play the game by killing them dead, over and over again, when C asked me how I liked the movie How to Train Your Dragon, and I said many things about how much I liked it, and one of the things I said was that I liked that they got real Vikings to sing the closing song in the credits.

Real Vikings. You know, Jónsi.

I mean, seriously! People think Vikings where like these thugs wearing helmets with horns (which the movie playfully indulged in) whacking people, stealing their goods, particularly the girls to get to their goodies.

Cause Viking men like cookies.

Who doesn't? :p

*snicker* *blush*

But, come on! They had literature, a culture, their own writing, and their own language that wasn't based off that wimpy romantic shit everybody else in Europe (a Greek word, I'll have you know, not Latin) was speaking, but came straight from the Aryans, skipping even those bed-sheet-wearing Greeks! They stole food, and womenfolk, from other people, because the latter: who wouldn't? I'd steal me some hot Irish lass, too! And the former: you ever try to grow anything in Iceland? No? Try that and see if you're not raiding the Giant food store for some Campbell's Chicken Noodle soup tomorrow!

So, anyway, real Viking runes (that didn't spell anything, I mean, where was their linguist and will they hire me? I'm looking! I'll even take the occasional ass fucking from the boss-man and agent if that ... 'facilitates' ... my ... 'entry' into that ... 'target sector') and a real Viking band playing. I liked that.

I remarked, further, that Jónsi sounds like Sigur Rós, except that Sigur Rós is 'sad' and Jónsi is 'trip-happy.'

I should have fastened my seat belt there.

Because after asking if I knew about trip-hop, ... excuse me? I invented trip-hop! I am the trip-hop-happy preteen azn girl whose feet you cannot see fluttering over the DDR mat, thank you very much, ... C said that Sigur Rós wasn't sad, per se (that is French), but was ...

But was what?

"Well," she mused, "they're ..."

"'Sad'?" I offered.

"No," she answered, "Not 'sad,' but they're ..."

"'Sad'?" I suggested.

"No," she said, annoyed, "there's a French word for it, but the American word is ..."

"'Sad'?" I recommended.

Max wasn't helping at all, with this, "Yeah, I know what you mean."

Max is a very agreeable guy.

C, the poor creature, was probably thinking of 'melancholie' which is the French word for 'sad.' Or she was thinking of 'tristesse' which is the French word for 'two people in other relationships, but fucking each other.' Because why? Because one of the guys or girls finds out, and somebody ends up dead, and after that, everybody is ... wait for it: 'sad.'

The problem here is that C was trying to convey a concept to moiself (that is CT French), and the problem with that is, well: I like dancing on tabletops ... nekkid! ... when I'm right, which I always am, and you're wrong, and I win, like I always do.

Those are the kinds of days I have.

Good times! Good times!

Devil with the Red Dress

... I'm discovering my femmy-feminine side.

I mean, so, you know: what? So a girl gets complimented for wearing a green ensemble (the skirt is not 'knee-high', it's ... c.v.n.t.-high), and yes, so it goes straight to her head and so she buys a little red number, that she may or may not have in her budget, but hey, you only live once, right?

And getting a compliment?

It's like ... getting a good review of a chapter you just wrote, right, my fellow author(esse)s? You're like: nnn, well I won't tell you what you're like, because there's no describing it, you just have to experience by actually going out there, writing a chapter, and getting a good review (and then you're hooked, which is a very, very bad thing: 'reviews, my anti-drug, what's yours?')

So I won't tell you what that's like, but I will hint and say my washing machine has been receiving a lot of LUV!

(Is 'luv' an euphemism for 'soaked panties'? Just wonderin')

But I have ...

Okay, seriously now,

... I mean `phfina-seriously, of course.

But I have a question:



(quit staring at my butt, you pervs!)

Why do they put that notch back there?

'They' meaning the fashion designer.

Ever notice how fashion designers, that is, of girls' clothes, are all, predominantly ('pre' 'dominant') ... male?

Oh, you're pat answer: so a girl can walk, because she can't in a dress like that that is oh-so-tight in all the oh-so-right places.

Uh, huh, that's a pat answer.

Ready for the real answer?

I'll tell you why they put the notch, — or, dare I say: slit — back there.

Who designs these fashions, the oh-so-tight dresses with the 'supporting' corset to really make sure guys don't miss a thing?

Uh, huh: horny pervy guy architects ... I meant: fashion designers. Jeez! (but still horny and pervy).

And WHY do they design them with that slit back there?

It's not to help you so you can walk, sweetheart.

It's for the easy access.

I mean, seriously: Is this a house dress? NO! It's not a house dress. Is it a ballroom gown so a guy can press his you-know against you during the slow numbers ('numbers' meaning dance-sets, you pervs!). No. What is it?

It's a little Mad Men secretary pool dress for you to wear, so that Big Bad Mean Mr. Bossman can call you into his office as you deliver him his morning coffee, and oopsie, I just dropped my pen, Vera, would you pick that up for me?

Yessir, Mr. BigusDickus Bossman.

And then what happens?

You KNOW what happens next! But I'll spell it out for you anyway (and why I'm spelling it out I'll get to later in this post).

WHAMMO! he slams your head into his desk, and since that little slit, I mean notch, is there, all he has to do is unzip and bust through your nylons for is early morning quicky anal sex with his secretary fvckslvt because that's what you, that is: me, is for.

So you just go to work now not even wearing the nylons anymore (getting to be an expense to replace them twice a day) nor even panties.

Like I said: easy access.

Okay, so why does he bend you over the desk and anal smex you? (Warning: boring `phfina analysis ahead)

Firstly, with you bent over the desk, your fingers and toes, that is, your claws are unable to gouge out his eyes and rupture his little you-know. You're in the perfect submissive position, which only further enflames, and fans the flames, of his unleashed passions.

Slit in the back designed by guys, for guys.

Secondly, it's anal so he can avoid the paternity lawsuits or the responsibility (that is, the consequences) of having to divorce his wife and marry you and his new little jr he just put in your belly.

Child support, either way, see? Anal smex avoids all that mess. Facilitated by what?

The slit, in the back of your dress. Designed by men, for men.

Okay, so you and I (now) know the real reason that slit is back there.

So why does it stay there, then?

(And now it's 'later in the post' as I promised)

Because we want it there.

Yup. I went there.

If submissive little us, that is 'women in society' didn't accept our submissive little roles, and say, excusez-moi? when Big Bossman came at our derrières with his freed willy, but instead maced and then bobbited him (no, I'm not endorsing sexual violence nor assault from either party), then a whole lot more guys would be a whole lot more respectful of a whole lot more girls in the secretary pool.

But, the times being the times, and women being what we are told we are: that is, the fairer, weaker, submissive sex ...

We just take it.

... and look forward to it.

This was the part where I get tarred and feathered by a whole angry crowd of womyn from almost all sectors.

But yes, we tolerate in, and we even fantasize about a strong, dominate (in this male pre-dominated society) Bossman (or, whew, Bosswoman, yes, please) (I didn't just write that) (yes, I did), forcefully taking us and making us theirs.

Why?

Because when we are taken oh-so-forcefully, doesn't it mean we are desirable? Pretty?

And when we are made their bitch ... ('You're my bitch now!' he screams as willy rams and rams and rams and then releases into your anal cavity) ... doesn't being possessed like that, every day, mean we are loved?

So we buy that green number, and that demure (hot) little red number, because ... we want to be pretty, desired, and loved.

To be held by somebody else. In somebody else's arms, and have the weight of somebody else pressing down on us.

To be one, in union, with another, just for that instant, every day at work at the morning coffee and the just-before-lunch-to-work-up-the-appetite fvck.

... not that I'm talking from personal experience at all, mind you, it's just stuff I've heard, and things I've observed ...

REALLY! Honest! And I'm not protesting too much!

But to be one, so we aren't alone.

Just for that one second, not to be alone: to have somebody else fully being with you, the proof is that they are in you, and remain in you, even after they pull out, you still have the proof of that love in you, and you keep it in, clench it in your guts, so that you know you are alive, just for that one moment, and are loved, or, very sadly, were loved, for a moment in time.

That slit.

Yes, I like my new red dress very much, even though it makes me sad to think what it, that is 'me', is for.

Everything makes me sad, so that's okay.

Today's First reading

Job [`phfina] spoke, saying:
Is not man's life on earth a drudgery?
Are not his days those of hirelings?
He is a slave who longs for the shade,
a hireling who waits for his wages.
So I have been assigned months of misery,
and troubled nights have been allotted to me.
If in bed I say, "When shall I arise?"
then the night drags on;
I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.
My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle;
they come to an end without hope.
Remember that my life is like the wind;
I shall not see happiness again.

Job 7:1-4, 6-7

— `phfina's analysis

I've been praying a lot these days, and I've been reading from the book of Ecclesiastes, `cause, you know: it fits.

Saga asked me: 'What do you want me to do?'

Because why? Because I said, don't do things for me or because of me, don't be afraid of me: write to me, or don't write to me, as you want to. And I said: 'Listen to your heart.'

Big mistake.

Her heart told her that I will move on with my life.

Well, no duh.

That's what it is, isn't it, to be alive: you're in movement. Only in death do you stop moving completely. So, Saga — wise, insightful Saga — listened to her heart, and saw me, and said, 'she'll move on.'

It wasn't the response I was hoping for. It wasn't the response I wanted.

But it was a real, heartfelt response from her.

So, now: the question is on me. What will I do?

I know what I want to do. And I know the fairy tale movie thing to do: 'And `phfina somehow righted every wrong, swept the fair maiden Saga off her feet, and rode off into the sunset where they lived happily ever after.'

But then there's the `phfina alternative. Find somebody, find anybody willing, shoot up, with shots, and shots, put her hands around my neck, and beg her to strangle me as she fucks me to death.

Go out with a Big-O bang, totally numb, whimpering into the darkness of death.

And then there's the Saga response: life goes on, and so will you.

I think. I think her response is the saddest, because there's no remorse in it. I mean, there is, and reading her words, I can feel her heart break in every word, as I feel mine, breaking with hers. But, so what? You mope, and you cry, and you then get up, take a shower, and go to work, and go to school, and life goes on, and so what.

Why?

Why, Saga?

Why did you tell me you love me? Me: weak, little, frail me? Knowing my psychoses? Knowing, in advance, what this break up was coming? And why? Because girl after girl you've left, because 'it's not right,' this forbidden love, 'it's not right.'

Did you want to be able to look back and say, 'And this one, this one was my lover for a time'? And: 'she wrote me things, such sweet things, such naughty things, that I will always treasure'?

No, you didn't say that. You took a risk, and dared, and hoped, and filled me with such hope, and life, Saga, life for more than a year where all I had had was emptiness and despair, and a sure knowledge the only way out was out, and it wasn't how, it was just a matter of when.

And then you came into my life.

But with all those girls before, when you left, and left, and left them when your conscience gnawed away at your soul that what you were doing was wrong.

Did you think, when you blurted out, in anger, that you loved me: 'This will be different'?

Doomed from the start.

There is no 'different.'

Here's why. 'Different' is 'well, she'll be different than the other girls' or 'I'll feel differently' or 'the situation will be different.'

'To be different' is 'to compare' and 'to compare' always has as its basis the thing you want to be different from.

So, what's always in front of you, for 'different', the thing you want to be 'different' from. The 'failure' and with that in front of you ...

Doomed from the start.

One thing never changes in 'it'll be different.'

You.

You look for a different relationship, a different girl, a different job, a different major, ...

but you're always there. And so what happens? Just like the last job, you get those prying curious people who annoy the hell out of you, just like the last girl 'God, I hated that when Sophie did that, would you just say what you mean and stop hemming and hawing like stupid little girl who can't make up her mind?'

They are all the same, because ...

Because you are there, and you haven't changed, and you make them into the exact same circumstance you just ran away from because you couldn't stand anymore the situation you created, and everybody was your puppets, pulled by your string.

You know this, Saga! You commented on it yourself when, in Bells are Ringing, poor Sam ate the bitter words of her own regrets about heartbreak in relationship after relationship, and here she is now with Chris, looking for something 'better' something 'different' when Sam is still the same old panther Sam, hunting down sweet, tender Chris girls, knowing they will, each and every one of them, break her heart.

'Different' doesn't work.

'Better' ... isn't.

'Change' never happens.

The only thing that works?

You.

You have to become new. Not different. Not 'not like I used to be,' but ...

New.

You have to become a person you love, admire, respect, and are happy with when you see her in the mirror.

Then what's different?

Absolutely nothing.

People are still people. It's still cold and grey outside.

But you.

You are new. And the cold and grey are ... a delight. The cold makes you feel alive, and joyful.

And people? What they do is funny, now, or sweet, or silly.

And that girl.

That girl, so intense, with her penetrating blue eyes and straight black hair and no fashion sense whatsoever, but there's something about her that ...

I've got to get that girl into my bed, because her words have already captured my heart, and I've got to fuck her brains out until she's beyond exhausted, so she no longer thinks and thinks and thinks herself into her sadness, and hold her through the night, cuddling with her, kissing her hair and she moans in her nightmares, ...

and love her.

Right or wrong?

I don't know.

You don't either. You know now, because nearly everything you do is wrong, you being you.

But when you are a new you.

Then what is right? What is wrong?

What is wrong, for me now, is living in bleakness, and agony, and is it wrong to love and to be loved?

Yes, it is wrong to love, and to be loved.

Because to love and to be loved ends up in sadness, and heartbreak, and Saga says she can't love me, it's wrong.

I can't ask her to love me. To ask her to do this would make her sad and conflicted, and if I asked her to do this for my happiness, I'm saying my happiness is more important than her life.

What do I want to do?

I want to ask her to throw aside her scruples, and to love me, and fuck her compunctions. I NEED LOVE HERE!

But what about her? Wasn't it agonizing, this period of reflection, and then this conclusion that she just so loved to be brave enough to tell me? And do I honor her, her insights, her wisdom, by saying: "Fuck that, and fuck me, right now, cause I need to be held, goddamnit, and I need you to tell me what you have told me time and again, because without you I'M NOTHING!"

What do I do? Oh, God, what do I do?

Well, right now: I'm doing the taxes. And I'm stuck, cause writing down those numbers, so clinically, and seeing all that money going out, and seeing so much less coming in.

I'm stuck.

I write down those numbers, and I measure my worth.

Is there such a thing as a 'negative yardstick'?

In this post-Ayn Rand world, our worth is in what we produce or what we consume ('mooch'). And the producers? Live the high live with soirees and fetes and hobnobbing with other producers.

And the moochers...

Soylent green.

It's starting to happen. It's been happening in the 3rd world, it's happening in the Old World. It's happening here.

And how we eat people is to force the wife into prostitution or the daughter or to become a boy so 'he' can work in the ... um, sneaker factory or farming in WoW or work in the sulfur mines or ...

Or work for the producers as fuck-me-up-the-ass-boss secretaries.

It's in Ayn Rand's novel, but it's not fiction, not anymore.

So that's what I'm doing.

And Saga is right.

I will move on.

Hell, there's already a line forming, and if there weren't all I'd have to do is go to the meat market, whichever one works, Whole Foods or a gay bar, or hell, the super bowl's tonight, and I'm Irish, a pub will do very well, and 'whistle' by batting my eyelashes and get bent over the produce counter by one of the producers.

Producers don't waste time with dinner on the first 'date' anymore. It's a waste of time and money for a good old hard fuck that is there for the taking, whether she wanted it or not, and obviously she did.

Back to taxes. I have the hard task of writing numbers in column A (income) and column B (deductible expenses) and coming up with a number in column C (taxable income) even though B is greater than A.

Not so hard to do: just be honest. I'm not a zero; no: 'zero' is too high for me.

I'm a loser.

My First Cigarette

Okay, writing this post, again.

I'll probably keep rewriting this post until the day I die.

Which may very well be today.

Go for the tragic waif much, `phfina?

Yep.

You remember your firsts, don't you? We all do, don't we. They are like milestones (millstones?) in our lives. Why is that?

I remember my first time. Not that time. Of course I remember that time. I'm talking about my first cigarette.

I was ... oh, I don't remember, actually, as it's coming up, on Oh, my God! 20 years now, because I was 7 or 8 or 9 when I had my first cigarette, don't you know.

What does that say about me? A girl, smoking before her first time, and first period, and first ... well, everything, right? A girl smoking that early in life? Well, girls like that don't turn out well.

That's what you're thinking, isn't it? It's okay, you can fess up, although you won't, being far to polite to be honest, even to yourself.

Me, I get really fucking real with myself, every morning, right in front of the mirror. Yep, there's me.

You should try it sometime: getting really honest with yourself. I like honest people. A lot. And it's really freeing, seeing yourself, exactly as you are, and exactly as you aren't. It clears your eyes and your head.

So you can see everything that way, too.

Scary, that: seeing things as they are.

I get ahead of myself.

My first cigarette.

So, one day, out of nowhere, my mom's sister visits us. That would make her my aunt ('ayhnt'). I didn't know I had aunts on my mom's side. You see, stereotypes are there for a reason, 'cause stereotypes point to a reality. Irish? We die fast, before our time, and violently. All my aunts and uncles on my mom's side? Dead. And not through natural causes ... unless you count the bottle as a natural cause. But gambling and drinking and fighting and violence can lead to a quick end.

So, this aunt comes and visits us, and I had absolutely no idea what to make of her, because she wanted to make nice with her niece, and I was not having any part of this stranger strangling me in a bear hug.

We started off wonderfully.

So, mom and aunt ... who had a name. Had. Cathy. Aunt Cathy. They go off on a walk and talk and ... what? reminisce? about the good old days where their Dad would beat them? and their brothers? ('Brothers'? How many brothers? Meaning: uncles! That I never got to meet) and how their Mom would get so drunk she ...

Hoo, boy! Happy-happy, joy-joy! That's us Irish! Oh, yeah!

So I was sneaking along behind them in their walk in our poor town in CT, one of the poorest States in the union, trying to be inconspicuous, and I guess I was, because Aunt Cathy takes out a cigarette and lights it, and ...

And I will never forget this, even though I've repressed it for a decade.

And gives one to Mom, who lights up, inhales deeply ... gratefully ... and breathes out a cloud of smoke that wreaths her head.

I didn't know Mom smoked.

I didn't know Mom smoked.

I ...

And in that very moment. Right then.

That's when it happened.

That's when I discovered 'right and wrong' and 'us and them' and ... well, everything else when the world is ripped apart and you're left standing on one side of a chasm, looking down into the abyss, and that voice, that voice you never, never, never had until right now, right this instant, pipes up very, very quietly in your ear, and whispers those poisonous words.

That's not right,

She's saying it to me, right now, as I'm writing through my tears. She, her, me. In my voice, is telling me: 'that's not right.'

... And Mom and Aunt Cathy, God rest her soul ... (we Irish say that) ... walked along, and Mom sucked her cigarette down to nothing, but Aunt Cathy carelessly tossed hers aside ... she had packs to spare. Packs.

And they walked along, and I snuck along behind, until I reached that cigarette.

And I stopped.

And I looked at it. Lipstick on the filter. (Lipstick! How shockingly sinful!) ... that's me: little puritan bitch already! Pristine condition, smoldering on the grass.

And I picked it up, as I say Aunt Cathy, no: Mom, hold it, and I put it to my mouth, ...

And I drew it in.

It.

That's what 'it' tastes like: bitter, acidy, tart, burnt.

I didn't cough. No. I took that smoke into my being.

It matched. 'It.' The smoke. Sin.

... and my soul.

Do you know what happened that day? No: that hour of the morning?

I do.

It's funny, what one little thing can do to a person. Do you know Viktor Frankl? He's probably one of the greatest minds of our century. You should know him: you've read The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt, right? So you remember how Viktor Frankl was teaching philosophy at Cambridge and two boys wanted to take his class, so he wrote something down in Ancient Greek and asked them to critique.

Of course, the boys had to know what it said first, right?

Well, anyway, Vickor Frankl, a good German Jew, was interned at a concentration camp during WWII, and one day, he was standing in line, and the guy next to him was slightly out of place, so it make Viktor look out of line.

So the German guards beat him.

You know what happened then?

Viktor Frankl developed this entire philosophy. He tried to see reason in all this insanity, and then he went "AHA!" for he realized that he was trying to see reason.

And so he wrote a very little, thin book: "Man's Search for Meaning."

Read it. You already have, because it's shaped how everybody in this post-modern era sees the world. So you ... 'should' read it to know what's pulling your strings all the time, and why.

So, anyway, his title says it all, and the hundred pages after that (inside the book) explain that.

A story that touched my heart when I read it in the book, although I didn't know why at the time, being all of 15 when I read it (yes, I was a 15-year-old girl reading philosophy books. Go ahead and think more about me in that light) (Go ahead and say it, if you dare to be honest to yourself) was that inmates could tell who would be dead in their cots the next day.

All you had to do is see somebody light up.

You see, cigarettes were the only money in that prison camp. You traded them for a deeper dip of the soup, so you had just enough protein not to fall over (and then be very shortly dead) while being worked. You traded them so they guards wouldn't beat you as much. You traded them for things in the black market. But your cigarettes? You never, never smoked them.

Unless you gave up. That very second, and you were ...

... Well, Frankl doesn't say it, but I just put it together. You were taking your smoke before the firing squad.

One final smoke before you gave up the ghost.

And, invariably, you did. Every single time Viktor saw somebody smoking, the very next day, the guy didn't get up from his cot, because all that was left was a few pounds of flesh to be disposed of in the incinerator.

Do you know what?

You'll never guess, so I'll tell you.

But after I tell you this.

Viktor Frankl, and his little book that has literally shaped the world?

It's wrong. Man. Heh, `phfina: 'Man.' Man is a meaning-making machine.

That's all he is. ('He').

(I'm fucking talking like Viktor Frankl, for God's sake).

But reality.

Here it comes, ladies and gentlemen.

Reality is just there. There is no meaning in reality. It's just there. And it doesn't care. It doesn't care about your meanings and your meaning-making. It just goes on and on and on. A million years from now, no: a thousand, no: one hundred.

One hundred years from now, everything you know, and care about, and cried over, or where callous and got scarred 'forever' from your own callousness, everything. You, your parents, your lover, your children, will be dead and buried and gone, and nobody, nobody will care one wit whether you lived or died (because you did) or wrote or sang or loved or cared or cried.

Nobody.

And then, moving beyond that. The world is you, right? Well, the rest of reality could care less about you. You think a zebra is thinking about you and your grades at school as its neck is being torn out by a lion on the hunt? You think the hyenas care about you and your job when they steal that kill from the lion, ripping apart the still bleating zebra?

Reality doesn't care that my mom smoked that day, and reality doesn't care what I thought about it.

But man is a meaning-making machine.

So, look at you. You are so trapped, making meaning out of this entry, because that's all you can do, and you even make meanings around making meaning, and you try to make that meaning-making reality.

But it's not. It's maya. It's chimera. It's dust. Dust to dust.

And that's where all your hurt come from. Listen to me. That's why you cry and cry and cry, because reality's there, but you say, 'but ...'

But you say 'but ...' and that's where all your pain and sin and agony comes from. From you crossing the ford with the dam just up the river broken, but 'I have to get to the other side ..." and why? "Well, because ..."

"Well, because ..."

Listen to all the time you say 'because' and listen to your context. Which isn't reality at all, it's a way of seeing, and a way of not seeing, so you can't even see what's right in front of you until you get gobsmacked by a mack truck that is what reality is.

BLAM!

And the following up phrase: "You're dead." And fade to black and curtains.

But no curtain call for you.

You know what happened to me that day? That day that little girl of seven or eight or nine had her first cigarette?

That was the day I died. No, really. I did. I died.

And all that is left now is this thing. This thing a walking shadow, drifting right through life, right past life, saying 'that isn't right,' and wondering why, wondering why things are the way they should be and i want my mommy i want my mommy i want my mommie bak.

Is this mom's fault? No.

Is this Aunt Cathy's fault, God rest her soul, the fucking bitch, for giving my mom that poisonous stick-snake and killing me KILLING ME!

GOD! It's so easy to say yes, but that's my lie, right? That's my payoff, or, more accurately: my copout.

No, it's not Aunt Cathy's fault, may she sleep with the angels and rest in peace.

No, the fault is that little girl, right there, sneaking along behind her mom, want to grow up and be just like her, and look what happened.

Look what happened.

I grew up.

And I wonder. Am I just like her, so nervous, so caring, so wanting the best for her daughter, and so afraid to say one word about anything but having this huge cloud of meaning floating above her head that you could speak to her because you had to speak, not through, but to it?

I wonder.

she

she

she didnt want me. she

ogod

she didn't want children, and i came along and she was so so old already and ...

and then she had me.

and god did i ever turn out didnt i. nutcase. freak. sociopath.

Major axis: morbid Obsessive-compusive
Minor axis: depression

medicated. isolated. 'treated'

No records of that. Those I shredded.

But I can't shred the mark on my soul. I can't shred how I see how people look at me, knowing they see a freak.

But I can shred something that's shreddable.

Guess what I found at the bus stop a couple of weeks ago. Guess.

A pack of cigarettes. Just opened. Only one smoked. Lemme get'm out of my backpack here.

Their Newport. Green. I like it. Irish.

I look at them. Sometimes. I feel them when I don't dare look.

One day, I'm gonna smoke one of them.

My last cigarette. Just like my first one. Stolen from somebody's discard.

Why?

'Why?' you ask.

You weren't listening, were you.

My mom, who, by all accounts is a saint, insofar as I can tell ... I mean, I would say she's like Mary, except I made that acquaintance already, thank you, and my mom is someone I'd like to flee to, not from. Well, what did she do?

Nothing. She raised me as best as she possibly could, and one day, to blow off steam, she took a long drag, and look what happened!

Me. That's what happened.

Now. Okay. Use your brains like I do for a sec.

Put me in my mom's place, and have my daughter following along, watching everything I do, and creating her world as she sees it looking at me through her eyes.

Women get postpartum depression, and they wonder why.

Well, no duh, stupid! It's because all the sudden reality hits you with a two-by-four and you realize, after the fact, that you're a mommy.

I have prepartum depression.

Because my mom made one mistake, and it wasn't even a mistake, it was just her letting her hair down with her sister, and I formed my whole reality around that.

Me? With a baby?

You know what I'll do, if I find I'm pregnant (again)?

I'll look for a clinic.

No, not an abortion clinic. I'll look for one of those clinics that kill the mother to save the child. From her.

From me.

But they don't have many of those around, and inquiries along those lines in polite society are usually regarded with more than a modicum of approbation.

So I'll take out that pack of Newports. And take a long drag. My last cigarette. To finish the job the first one did.

If I had any strength in my fingers, I'd take that smoke right now.

But I haven't slept in three days, and I'm dead tired, so I'm going to take a nap, and look at the pack again tomorrow. And not smoke again, tomorrow. And look in the mirror again tomorrow.

You ever look into the eyes of a soulless person? Yes you have. Admit it. Into the eyes who as allows the world to beat the life out of them, entirely, and all they do is what everybody else does, and why, because people are cattle, and they are running on autopilot to sbux to job to home to bed to sbux because that's ...

because that's ... because that's all there is.

You ever look into those eyes?

Probably not. You've got to be looking out of eyes to look into somebody else's eyes. And you can't look at anything, can you, because that require too much ... from you. Too much being what again? Exactly.

Well, I look into the depths of soulless eyes every. fucking. day. Every single morning.

And then, I go out, and I look into your eyes. And I try. Oh, God, I try to see you, to see someone there, but I'm not very good looker and im so so tired of looking out, hoping, hoping, and getting nothing back but just people resigned, resigned to just pushing on, pushing through, pushing past me and everything else in their life 'bothering' them.

I'm going back to reading the Eddas.

bye now.

I'm Free

I was in a sammich shop, getting a sammich, when this oatmeal and barley guy (definitely granola) starts strummin' away on his guitar the following song:

She's a good girl: loves her mama
Loves Jesus and America too
She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis
Loves Horses and her boyfriend too.

This doesn't describe me at all. I'd have to be a good girl, now, wouldn't I, for this song to be about me. But then he sang this:

Now I'm free, free fallin'

I wanna glide down over Mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
I wanna free fall out into nothin'
Gonna leave this world for awhile.

And I'm free, I'm free fallin'

Free fallin' now I'm free fallin' Free fallin' now I'm free fallin'

"Free Fallin'" by Tom Petty

— `phfina analysis:

You really do want to know, so I'll tell you. Why you want to know, I have no IDEA! But you do, so you can tell me how fucked up I am, and so I put in all this effort to tell you, really and truly, what's going on in here in this nothing that is me, and what do I get for it? I get punished for trying, so why even try?

Why. even. try.

When I heard that song, the unchewed food in my mouth turned to ash, and I had to go. There are anvil clouds overhead and a good, cold stiff breeze, and I should be happy, as I am the wind and I am the water, and I am in my elements.

So why are there tears falling down my face. 'I am water,' I say, and all I do is cry, but I haven't cried in weeks, and now it's hitting me. Hard. 'I am air,' I say, so all I do is talk-talk-talk, that's all I do, that's all I am, wind and water, tears and air. Nothing.

I saw it, a vision so hard, in that sammich shop that I had to leave my unfinished meal, I had to get out of there away from people.

I was ...

Remember "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"? At the very end, that little waif of a girl at the temple carved into the cliff's edge, looks out into the air, whispers

"Goodbye"

and jumps.

I am on the edge of the cliff, looking over, looking forward, looking down into the abyss. I don't have to look back. I am not that girl who had a devoted lover calling out for her to stay, willing to help, to be there for her. I have nobody behind me.

And then I raise my arms and I ...

It's a chemical imbalance. I tell myself. I'm chemically imbalanced, and the silence has worn me down so I listen to that not so little voice in my head telling me exactly what I am and exactly what I have to look forward to, and those two things are the same thing.

And I know who to blame for keeping myself an arm's length from any and everybody trying ... or not trying ... to reach out to me, to tell me that I am lovable and loved. I won't let anybody that close to me. I tried looking into a friend's eyes today from group, as she was teasing me about ... about what? my sammich, my silly tiny little mushroom sammich for silly tiny little mushroom me.

Yeah, I'm a mushroom. I can't go out into the sunlight, just like a morlock, and I eat girls, but the girls I eat do scream and moan, but it's not 'cause they're complainin' nosirree, bob!

Hm, the medication is starting to work. Starting, `phfina?

But I couldn't look into her eyes.

I couldn't.

I couldn't look into her teasing eyes, I couldn't look at me in them. I couldn't.

And I had to go, leaving everybody because some stupid song was playing by some stupid granola guy, ...

... and I never say stupid.

And I had to leave them.

And here is where I complete ch 2 of Sirens, and I go to that cliff's edge, and I ...

and I go home.

I return to the dust. Oblivion awaits.

You know: I have this post all prepared. It's here, right in my back pocket. It's a one-liner. It's entitled "The Sublime Art of Suicide" and the body of the post is just one word: "goodbye."

No note. No 'explanation.' No nothing.

'Goodbye' ... 'God be with you' because He won't be with me anymore.

Not where I'm going.

So when you see that post, you'll know what happened.

So I was supposed to finish here with 'Goodbye,' and fuck the special title.

But I took a walk, and okay, I have a chemical imbalance? I'll self-medicate. I saw Thor. I (now) know what a boilermaker is. I'll rebalance, and then rebalance again, then rebalance again, until I lose my balance.

A can of guinness with that cute little fizzy ball inside is a full meal, and only costs two dollars at the supermarket. AND happy hour is in full swing now.

Warm up exercises, you know.

And then after I rebalance (after which I will have obviously hit the hay and have that ashen taste of dehydration in my mouth when), I'll wake up tomorrow, and we will see from there.

We will see.

This isn't a cry for help. So don't bother. I don't want your help. You have to be something to want something, and I don't want anything.

Or maybe I have it backward, and I'm so full of ... something, that I've filled the space that is me, that is: I'm not a clearing, I'm just this big huge blockage, so I have no room left to want for anything.

Do I want anything? No, unless 'wanting nothing' is something. No, unless oblivion is a desirous state.

It isn't. Oblivion is the abyss; it isn't a state, it's a ... dis ... what is it? A disintegration, a rending, a destruction. It's not a state, it's an end.

Shiva. Kali. Lila.

Me.

----

οἰκτροτάτην δ᾽ ἤκουσα ὄπα Πριάμοιο θυγατρός,
Κασσάνδρης, τὴν κτεῖνε Κλυταιμνήστρη δολόμητις
ἀμφ᾽ ἐμοί, αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ ποτὶ γαίῃ χεῖρας ἀείρων
βάλλον ἀποθνήσκων περὶ φασγάνῳ: ἡ δὲ κυνῶπις
νοσφίσατ᾽, οὐδέ μοι ἔτλη ἰόντι περ εἰς Ἀίδαο
χερσὶ κατ᾽ ὀφθαλμοὺς ἑλέειν σύν τε στόμ᾽ ἐρεῖσαι.

Homer, Odyssey, Book XI, ~400-430

Sensitive Girl

Do you know the difference between a sensible girl and a sensitive girl? Although it's not necessary that these two girls be different persons.

Hypothetically speaking.

So, it's not that I have reason to complain. I'm alive. That's a plus, I guess.

So, remember when I got just deluged by rain? I mean, the most recent time. Well only a crazy girl would let that happen to her again, on the same week, forsooth!

So, I packed. Clothes, that is. In my sbux backpack.

I'm quite the sbux girl. Like, can I even stay away from one for just one day? Ever? Even after I quit?

But I digress ... and do you know how much those little Naked Fruit juice thingies cost? Every day? Sure, mango madness helps me breathe, but ... maybe breathing is too expensive, for goodness sake.

Did I mention to myself that I digressed?

So I went to the zoo earlier this week. Saw the blesbok (imagine my lips caressing that word as I say it over and over and over again) and the macaw, that would not say 'Hello' to me, no matter how many times I kept saying 'Hello' encouragingly to it. Do you know how many times I kept saying 'hello' to that bird? I don't know, either. It was a lot.

And the zoo? There's a lot of walking to it. It's very hilly. And I was just walking along, la-di-dah, and what happens? Out of nowhere the storm clouds come rolling in, and FWHOOSH! it was the deluge. Everybody ran for cover, mommies pushing their babies, chaperones herding the school children, so you know, a smart girl would head under a canopy, right?

Well, the thing is, for me, is that I'm wind and water. And, God! I just threw my head back and spread out my arms and just ... just took it all into my being.

I was eyed by more than one person. I remember one India woman, her almond skin and eyes, now wide with disbelief, just staring at me, so I smiled, God! I smiled at the pure joy of it, being caught in a rain storm and just living!

Of course, my sbux backpack was safely ensconced under the canopy, so I could just, you know, change out of my wet things (drenched, actually), and everything would be fine.

Never mind that I've been coughing for about a month now.

And I didn't take into my calculations that walking back up all those hilly hills to the sbux just outside the zoo (how convenient!) would take a while, like 'more than a half-hour' a while.

And I didn't forecast that the temperature would drop 25°F right after the storm, instantly.

And so the bedraggled field mouse of a girl reached the sbux, and hit the air conditioning in there ... I might've sneezed once or twice.

But I changed in the little girl's room, and so everything would be fine. I'd just metro home. That is: ride the metro rail to D.L. and then take the quatro-cero-dos to my stop and walk the rest of the way home.

Of course, the temperature refused to rise. At all. And then it got late. And the walk home ...

Of course, the rain storm was gone, but then there was this light, then heavy mist that stuck to me, my hair, my clothes, ... my throat.

And I got home, and I plopped down onto bed, and I started coughing.

So here I am. My head is something the size of Luxembourg and I keep coughing and nothing comes up or out, except when it does and it's phlegmatic and a bit greenish. That's not good, is it?

But that's not such a big deal. Not really. What's the big deal is that when I cough, I want my head to come off, because that's what it feels like it's doing. Or what I wish it would do. I have a headache that ... just my head hurts, and is hot.

I guess I'll go to the doctor's Monday. I hate going to the Doctors. I hate the whole medical ... industry. I never felt good going to them as a girl, and then when ... well, steamroller? I've been flattened by them.

Anyway. Went to confession today. Walked. How? you ask. I am so doped up on ibuprofen that I am floating in a sea of pain, that I don't feel at all, because I don't feel a single part of my body.

And I'm a very kinesthetic person. I'm very connected to the feeling of being inside my body, so when I get disconnected from my body, when I go outside myself, which I have done, it's the most bone-chillingly terrifying thing for me. I'm disconnected from my body now, and I feel ... I feel I might not make my way back to myself. But I am detached ... from my body, so I'm feeling emotionally numb, too.

"People do not die of trifling colds!" snaps an irritated Mrs. Bennett to her teasing husband, seriously concerned that Jane might not make it.

Jane made it. But that's because little Lizzy, her sweet, smart, sharp sister was there with her.

I've been hovering in and out of consciousness at home. I ate some ramen noodles ... yesterday? ... morning? and then went back to bed and then I went to confession.

Which was ...

Okay, I didn't go to Fr. P, 'cause the line was long there.

Yeah, right. It was longer there. But if I go to Fr. T, a little Vietnamese man who survived communist interrogation...

They told him to renounce his belief in Jesus, and when he wouldn't, they bashed out his teeth with the butt of a rifle.

... Well, he's old, and hard of hearing, and he hasn't heard my confession in about a year.

Didn't stop him from laying into me. Hard. For the admonishment and absolution. God! I go to confession knowing what a bad, terrible person I am, I confess it, and then I get what-for.

"Masturbating twenty times since the last confession?" he reproached. "That's too much. That's a sickness. You have to get to the root of this evil, or you will be addicted and consumed by it until you die."

Thanks, Father. He absolved me, and then I had to walk home with that. With this. With me. I made it home. I always have lived within a block or two of a church, so I could walk to daily Mass before going to school. And have a vision of Mary. Bonus.

No visions today, 'cause maybe I'm too tired now. I'm going back to bed. So tell me what I'm a shit I am for not telling you how I'm doing, ... after all, I'm barely typing and typing and typing these words in the hands I don't feel connected to these arms I don't know what they are attached to. I can take it. I'm thick-skinned, colored yellow with a dusting of pollen.

And you know what? With all this, I have absolutely no reason to bitch. My sister doesn't have cancer. I didn't get a kidney infection. I didn't lose my husband in Afghanistan. My boss isn't bending me over his desk and fucking me up the ass so he doesn't have to divorce his wife and pay paternity on a child he fathered in me. I'm not in a dead-end job, like the millions of people I see rushing onto and off of the metro every day, pushing me around as if they don't see me, as if I'm not there, so focused they are to get to their jobs ('Susan, correct these reports for me, will you?') and then so focused to get the hell home, so they can fight with their husband and scream at their kids and have a headache and wake up early and do it over again.

I'm none of those things.

So I should be happy. Yay! Yippee!

Good night.

Addenda

Addendum 1, re: 'good little wifey and mom'

... yeah, right. If it pleases the court, I submit exhibit a (above), you see how brown that carrot bread is? Do you know how the Jews built the pyramids? They took that solid as a rock, burned to a crisp carrot bread and stacked one on top of each other until, voilà (or 'Violet'): pyramids.

And all I said to myself was: 'Oh, I'll just lie down here for a minute, and just rest my eyes ...'

... four hours later ... is that something burning?

You know, in Arabic tradition, the first thing the new bride does is make bread in the tandoor for her mother-in-law. It has to be perfect: not to doughy, not burnt. I saw a picture of one young girl crying because just one minute of inattention had the bread singed. Perfect start of the marriage there, eh? with the mother always saying, 'Oh, yes, I remember that time little Fatima burnt the bread ...' with a very stern and scolding look.

Addendum 2, re: fox supple.

Okay, okay, quit twisting my fallen-off arms, okay? So, I went back and revisited the soufflé recipe — the 'real vrai egg soufflé' recipe — and how could I not, with Saga saying, scoldingly, 'oh, but I'll try the real soufflé recipe, not your fakey one' (she didn't actually say that) and the French brigade and gendarmes battering through my door ("Oh, heresy! Sacrilege! Sacre Bleu! [whatever that means ...] You must try the vrai true recipe for the fun and joy of seeing if the soufflé stands!") (I do not know what fun it is to have your arms fall off, but whatevs ...) and this time, using a wisk, and much stronger, more exercised arms, and a wee bit more experience, it came off rather quickly, and yes, it was light and airy ... effervescent, even, unlike my quick faux substitute.

Still took an hour.

But it was yummy.

Anyway. You choose.

Addendum 3, re: 'Whatever that book was'

That book was a graphic novel. This guy wrote about boring stuff like vampires and stuff, and his friend/editor said: 'Meh.' and 'Blä.' and 'Write from your heart! Write from your soul! Don't give me this garbage!'

So he wrote and drew a graphic novel, about a girl, 24 years old, with terminal breast cancer.

And it's heartbreaking, poetic, beautiful ... as she's dying in the cancer ward, no hair, wasting away, she ...

Well, research it and read it. I won't describe any more to you. But he wrote about hope, you see, even in dying, even in death, he wrote about hope.

I think I see part of what my 'writer's block' is about.

...

I have so much else to write, and to say, but I'm off to a wake. A friend of the family died.

Hm. I wonder what will be said when I will die? 'A friend of the family died.' Probably not. I need friends for that to be said.

I'm not fishing, btw, so don't bother.

You know: update soon and all that. All we have is now; that's all you're given. You can't expect anything from me, like updating soon or finishing a story or responding to a PM, and I can't either. I mean, I try and I'll try, but one day soon ... well, all you'll see is that I haven't updated in a while. That's all. I appeared for a short time, wrote some things, and, like Violet, I'll just be gone, is all.

I'm sad, for some reason.

I love you all.

Taking it personally

You walked into the party
Like you were walking onto a yacht
Your hat strategically dipped below one eye
Your scarf it was apricot
You had one eye in the mirror
As you watched yourself gavotte
And all the girls dreamed that they'd be your partner
They'd be your partner, and

You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't you?

Carly Simon, "You're So Vain" 1973

— `phfina commentary:

You know, I get this all the time. From a goodly number of you, too: "Why are you writing about me in your entries?"

Okay, so you are ready for the one-two sucker punch, right?

Honey, you think this entry is about you, don't you? And you take it so, so personally, don't you? Oh, yes, you do. I know. I smart — still! — at some of the very sharp words I have received about things I have put up about ... "you."

Well, there's several things in that above statement (sez `phfina, wearing her professor tweed blouse) and the first thing that strikes me is, well, how else would you take it?

I mean, really, there's a couple of ways to deal with things, one of them is to be cool as a cucumber about it. "Well," sez you, "that's your point of view, and that's all very well and good, but it really doesn't apply to me. I don't take it personally, and nor should you, when I say the things I so coolly say. I have other concerns, you know, so I don't have the time, really, to engage with you."

You know what I have to say to that.

Well, I could be all impersonal, and say, "Well, fine, and have a great day."

Do you see me wearing that hat? Well, besides all day, that is: "Enjoy your beverage!"

My other response is screamed: "Well, fuck you!"

Some of you have faced that, I guess.

Look. Cool? Me? I was just accused of being 'not cool' ... and I'm like ... have I ever been accused of being 'cool'? And if I have, I would rip your face off.

"Oh, `phfina, you're so cool!"

Excuse me? Excuse me?

I BURN ... okay? I'm burning up, and I DON'T be all like: 'well, there's nothing personal.'

Because why?

Because GUESS WHAT!

It IS personal. Somebody said something to you and you were affected by it, and if you WEREN'T ... well, then go to the hospital, and get your pulse checked 'cause you just may be dead, okay?

"Don't take it personally"? Well, how the fuck else am I supposed to take it?

Excuse me, but if you're forgetting, but I'm a person here, and — newsflash — so are you!

And you just said something to me, and, yes, guess what? I took it personally, and just because you can use everybody else as a doormat, saying that sh!t to them, I am not going to let your shit fly with me, got it?

Like bullying. Like I am now.

*sigh*

Cool as a cucumber? Well, you don't look like a cucumber to me, but if that's the way you want to live your life ... as a cucumber, and not as a person ... then I say: have at it. I won't be able to stop you.

But I grieve, though. I do.

So ...

hm-hm-hm.

So some of you ... a lot of you ... read my posts, and are like, 'well, that's ... interesting.'

(how I detest that word. A cop-out word. A word that commits nothing of the sayer, ... just makes them think that it makes them look intelligent)

... And what do they get from that? Being cool as a cucumber?

What does anybody get from being cool ... instead of being committed?

But some of you go the opposite way, and go all `phfina on me.

Like, okay. I write in 'update soon' that not coming out to your mother is a cop-out, and who took it personally? (edited) And she was furious with me. Furious.

Did I write that post about (edited)?

Like, okay. I write in 'bad news, you win,' how you push around somebody you can own, bullying them until you suck the life out of them, and (edited) got it in her head that I wrote that post about her.

Did I write that post about (edited)?

But what did these girls get out of taking it all `phfina-y?

They got really, really pissed. At me. And took it out. On me.

And that hurt. 'Cause I didn't write those posts about them.

But then they did something. Then they looked in the mirror, and saw where those posts did apply to them, in their lives, and what did they do?

Well, they looked at were they were doing this, and they got to work on themselves. And the rewards, for themselves, on recognizing in themselves something that they didn't see before about themselves, and didn't like, and seeing it, and not liking it, going to work on it now, instead of just automatically lashing out, hurting people ...?

Well, have I given away too much? But when you see something in yourself, that somebody else points out, so rudely, so harshly, with so much love in their heart for you?

(Because otherwise, why would I bother? If I don't love you, why put up with all this pain and hurt of saying these painful and hurtful things?)

New worlds have opened up for them. For them. Plural.

I have opened up new worlds, for at least four girls ... because they took what I wrote ... personally.

And I didn't even write it for them.

Who did I write it for?

Who is the one girl who hasn't benefited from all that I've written, who, writing these words, instead of getting better, shoveling her way out of her shit, just digs deeper and deeper into the morass, finding more and more shit she has to own up to, but instead of getting better, just gets worse and worse and worse.

Who, when asked, 'how are you?' answers, 'I'm fine.'

But who really is in a place where she knows if she says, 'I hate myself, I hate myself, I hate myself, I hate myself. I want to die.'

Well, that raises all sorts of issues, problems, that have to be dealt with, but people just don't leave her alone with the 'I'm fine' answer but demand, 'No, really, how are you?'

But we've covered that ground before.

All this stuff I write, you take so personally, and I have to say ...

I'm so proud of you.

I'm so proud of you, taking on yourself and your life. You may think 'you're so vain' for thinking this post is about you. But I have an entirely different view on the matter.

You are so brave, reading yourself in this post. Daring to take yourself on. Being. Living. Daring to be and to live and to face yourself and revel in the things you like about yourself, and be pissed off about the things you hate, and then taking those things on.

When you read a post of mine, and say, 'well, that was interesting ...' look out. Look to your life, because I think you're not living it, if you're merely existing in a smug sense of self-satisfaction. But when you read my post, and you get so, so pissed off at me ...

Well, I could ask you to be gentle with me, the little hypocrite that I am, hitting you so hard with my sucker punches but then hiding under the covers the second you cut loose at me, screaming like a banshee for singing your life with my song.

... and that's me: so cutting, so insightful, so scared of her own shadow, that when somebody wants to put my name on a brochure that lands them millions of euros, all I can think of is people seeing my name, and I get sick, physically ill, just thinking of that.

... and that's not you. You aren't me. Thank God. You've dared to read my stuff, and to cry, or to cum, or ... even to dare to post a review! (Oh, the terror!) Or even dare to tell one of my friends you like reading my stuff (but not dare to say peep to me, God damn it) ('cause you know I'll tear you a new one) (but then you're shocked — shocked, I say — to find out that sometimes (okay, sometimes) I can be sweet, you know).

But what have I dared. Well, today I dared to go out to a museum. Wow. Hooray. Stop the presses. And that's about all I could muster. I mean, I liked it and all. Didn't like Paris. I was like: "City. Ick. People. Scary." Yearned for a forest in the countryside, but here I am, in the metro D.C. area, with all the city-life conveniences, so who am I fooling. I'm not a eel catcher in the forest of Fontainebleau. I'm not an Alsatian girl with a pretty little hat (she did look rather Irish to me. But what do I know?)

And going through the city, I kept my head held high. But all those people. No. Not people. Families. There where tons of them. Families. Mommies and Daddies and babies and children. And it was nice. But it bore down on me. It wore me down. I just ... wherever I looked, I was like, there is something I'm not, and never will be. All those families, so happy together.

And what am I? And what am I?

And know, being what I am, which is nothing, I just draw further and further into my shell, and that hurts you. You wonder how I am, ... but knowing full well that I am not well. So now I have people who care about me, and it hurts them that I'm hurting.

But when I was out, and writing, and getting so much attention, most of it good, but the bad was really bad. Really bad.

'cause I take it personally, your callousness, and your anger, and your righteousness. It's your shit, but I'm the one who gets shit on, for daring to say what she sees. And — oh! — you have made it abundantly clear to me how much you don't like being told things you don't like to hear about yourself.

So I thought writing would ... you know, ... be cathartic, you know? And let me release all this stuff that is tying me down to the past, so I could cut myself free of my suffering and float away into blissful nirvana of living my perfect, perfect life.

But ... look at me now.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones ..."

I'm this little stick. This little reed. And I so wanted to be solid like a stone.

But I ... my body's burning up. I ...

I set out writing, and I ... well, you see this great whatever ... and I'm wasting away into nothing. All these words I've written haven't helped me any at all, they've only made me worse.

And what's worse-worse is that you've subscribed. You've read my stuff and now you care about me. So my hurting now not only hurts myself, but now you hurt a bit, seeing me shrinking into myself. I can't have a good sulk and die all to myself, oh no! I hurt you now, with my silence and sadness.

Would I have written word one, seeing me now?

No.

This hasn't been pretty. This hasn't been pretty for me at all. And I can mirror-time all I want, but I know in my heart of hearts that it's all a big lie. All just another attempt to try to believe in hope when I see that I'm just trying to reach up from the darkness of this pit of despair, when I jolly well know this is my eternal consignment, so the reaching, grasping just shows the glimmer of light for one second before I'm re-immersed in darkness, making it all the more bitter for me, my fate.

If I hadn't written, I wouldn't have all this love and care from you. I wouldn't have you to hurt.

And I can't even manage hurting just myself. It hurts too much.

Hurting you? Seeing you rise above yourself, but then, you turn, having made it, and reach back for me? to pull me up and out?

I think: how sad. You are living the impossible dream. And I beg you to cut the chord. To move on. You've saved yourselves, ... please don't wreck your lives going back into the mire to rescue a lost cause.

I wish ...

I wish you were smart enough to see the reality of it. To take your earnings and to cut your losses (me, that is).

I wish God had answered my prayer a couple of years ago, and spared you, and spared me, all of this that is me.

But I can't go back, and I can't go home.

I can only go forward into tomorrow, until it's today. Again.

Or ... not.

I'm going to bed now. Good night.

Writing material

Thought for the day

Do you know how life is a roller-coaster ride, with it's ups and downs? Or so I'm told. And they tell you just to ride it, and not to get off?

I find myself here in the middle of this twister, a scared little girl with no ruby slippers and no toto.

They say in the center of a tornado and at the eye of a hurricane is utter stillness, so all I can do is stay in the center of this storm called life, and any step, ANY step in any direction leads to calamity. As I've seen. Today. Again.

And ... but ... if I stand still, the imperious, impersonal, dispassionate storm called life will roll, uncaringly, right over this sad little nothing girl.

Because that's what life does. It goes on. and on. and on.

God, I hope Saga writes.
God, after what I just wrote her, ... I hope she doesn't.

And then there's all the littered corpses scattered pel-mel behind me, too. 'Friends' or 'survivor victims of the 'phfina encounter.'

I am SO not cut out to be a masochist, so why do I keep doing this to myself. Why do I keep breathing? ... when I just. can't. breathe.

And I look in the mirror and ask one simple question: 'who is the cause of all this?' and look into the eyes of the girl who so knows the answer.

'You did, 'phfina. You,' she says. And she is so right: as always, it's all my fvcking fault.

Just some random thoughts for today. On the upside: 'ooh, fresh writing material! Yay!'

And the irony that I'm so present to right now is that people ask me, all the time, where I get ideas for my stories. Hm, let me think about that ... ah, yes! I know: I'm still breathing, unfortunately, so there is just oh-so-many things to write about today.

That's 'phfina's lovely little thought for the day. Happy? You want insights into mysterious reclusive little writer 'phfina? Well, then, there it is.