I am not that person anymore

BOB - if you are reading this - DONT. SERIOUSLY.
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so - blah blah blah, i did a bunch of stupid shit a long time ago. i was an ass, i hurt a lot of people with my behavior, i broke a few hearts and probably left a few scars. I'm considerably older now, and unless jules verne or whoever wrote that damn book about a time machine actually managed to build one so i could of back and fix my epic fuckuppery, ain't much i can do about the past. no, you cannot call me earl.

i am not that person anymore.

however, the 20+year-ago-bitch still lays a good guilt trip.

so, here i am minding my own business, answering the phone like a good lackey, and it's yet another person wanting to bitch their way up the food chain over some decision that was made for perfectly good reasons but amounted to piss in this person's wheaties. so i listen, i sympathise, i listen some more, i clarify, i suggest, i listen, and finally I'm all: okay, I'll leave a message for the person at the top of the food chain you're barking up (cuz i'm the secretary for the top of that particular food chain), but i need to prepare you that the answers you've received so far will not change. I'm sure food-chain-topper will be happy to chat with you, but i think your best course of action is still xyz.

so this is where i am revisited by ghosts of fuckuppery past, and the brain/mouth filter breaks down, and my inner guilt-trip bitch gloats nyah nyah nyah! You thought you were over all this crap buy you're not!!!

fucking bitch. (I actually wanted to call my inner guilt tripper the "c" word, but for some reason couldn't bring myself to type it.)

i take said caller's contact info and have to ask for her last name twice. then ask her to spell it cuz my brain has just melted. so instead of shuttingthefuckup, i say, gee, that's an unusual last name. opportunity to shutthefuckup: FAIL.

she agrees, it IS an unusual last name.

i say i used to know someone by that name, a long time ago.

yep - i said it. why? WHO THE FUCK KNOWS. this was yet another opportunity to shutthefuckup. sensing a trend? so anyway, my own married last name is extremely unusual, and i kind of have a fetish about unusual surnames, i like to freak people out by correctly pronouncing unusual names - what can i say, it's a gift. so this particular last name is so unusual, the caller is probably one of a dozen or fewer in the entire country. so i guess my inner last name fetishist slapped the crap out of the mature part of me that has sense, and then reached for a shovel. cuz that hole got even deeper.

caller says to me, oh really? WHO?

me: oh, someone i went to college with a long time ago.
caller: oh, (she says AGAIN) WHO?
~keep in mind all she knows so far is my first name and where i work, because she called me, right?~
me: his name was JimFred (changed to protect the whatevers)
caller: OH. I know who you are.
me: ....?
caller: JimFred is my husband.

*face palm*

holy mother of fuck. I know who she is. i was sleeping with her husband when they met. well, not like as in in flagrante when they met, but we were euphemistically 'seeing each other.'

So she proceeds to ask me some EXTREMELY uncomfortable questions about things i've worked very hard to put behind me, and she more than knows 'who i am,' she clearly has heard quite a few of the more sordid stories, as well. and was actively trying to jog my memory.

and i am transported back to 1988.

so as fast as i possibly can, i tell her gee i have another call i'll have Mrs Food Chain get back to you next week, gee thanks for calling, please give your husband my regards kthxbai.

wtf - did i tell her to GIVE HER HUSBAND MY REGARDS????

*face palm* followed rapidly with *head desk*

and another *face palm*

10 days later, i am still face-palming.

why is it one freaking phone call from the wife of an old conquest manages to drag me back to that place of shame and disgust and regret and self-loathing? apparently my "golly gee i'm a healing woman starting over and rediscovering the me i was meant to be" is all a bunch of fucking bullshit because, look at this, i'm 23 all over again, hating myself and screwing anyone who sniffed around just to make myself feel numb... except this particular guy was one that actually cared about me, and wanted to fix me, and was genuinely trying to build a relationship with me, and i smashed him to bits by fucking someone else. and then introducing him to cheater-man.



the caller? she picked up the bits.











I AM NOT THAT PERSON ANYMORE
I AM NOT THAT PERSON ANYMORE
I AM NOT THAT PERSON ANYMORE
I AM NOT THAT PERSON ANYMORE
I AM NOT THAT PERSON ANYMORE
I AM NOT THAT PERSON ANYMORE
I AM NOT THAT PERSON ANYMORE
I AM NOT THAT PERSON ANYMORE
I AM NOT THAT PERSON ANYMORE
I AM NOT THAT PERSON ANYMORE
I AM NOT THAT PERSON ANYMORE
I AM NOT THAT PERSON ANYMORE
I AM NOT THAT PERSON ANYMORE
I AM NOT THAT PERSON ANYMORE
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Details in the Fabric

In a few weeks we'll have been back in mo 3 yrs. I grew up in Missouri, St. Louis to be exact, and I went to college in the town where we live now. I lived and went to school here from January of 1984 to August of ‘88, and never graduated. I floundered through 3 majors, one petition to the dean to re-enroll, 10k in student loans, 6 addresses, half a dozen jobs, a dozen roommates, countless gallons of liquor, a little weed, a few too many men, and what I know now to be a deep depression. I always loved the town though; it's a good college town.

When we first decided to leave New Mexico, we both agreed we wanted to live in a college town, but never got really serious about packing up. We'd been talking about it for a few years already when we got pregnant with Pickle, and that's what really lit the fire. We wanted out of NM before he hit the public school system in Albuquerque (too much drugs, gangs and violence). We made a list of what kind of things we wanted, and considered Eugene Oregon, Madison Wisconsin, and a couple of other towns that never really made it to the top of the list. After a couple of years debating, and an increasing desire to get out of NM before Pickle reached school age, we buckled down and quit screwing around with the decision. I have family in St. Louis still, including aging parents, and BikeBoy's family all live in Indiana, so we sadly realized moving us and our new child to Oregon wouldn't be the kindest thing to do to our families. After following the weather in Madison for a few months, I had to nix that shit. I hate winter enough as it is, and that's a NM winter I'm talking about.

I'm not sure how Columbia entered the mix, but I think it was probably thanks to a customer at the bike shop where BikeBoy worked in Abq - I seem to remember him coming home from work one day asking me about Columbia. He'd spoken to more than one person who'd either lived here, or wished they still lived here, or was planning to live here, and that was that. While my college experience wasn't the happiest, I never blamed it on the town. It took us 2 years to really get our shit together for the move, and we bid a fond farewell to the land of enchantment in March of 2006, after 13 years.

I secretly dreaded running into anyone who knew me from my college days, but figured that after almost 20 years, it was highly unlikely. I spent the first few months here driving around like a zombie, shell shocked from the enormity of the move, but it was more than that. The town had changed only on the edges - growth, expansion, sprawl, whatever you want to call it. But the core of town - downtown and the MU campus had changed very little. It was strange, almost comforting, and yet I'd hoped some things would have changed more and taken my memories with them. BikeBoy had a job waiting for him when we got here, and I enrolled Pickle in a preschool so that I had time to job hunt, but most of what I did those first weeks was drive around town chasing ghosts.

Every place in the parts of town that hadn't changed held memories of the person I'd been 20 years ago, precious few of them pleasant. I'd fooled myself into thinking I could bounce back to this town and leave it all in the past, but I was delusional. When I thought I’d exorcised all my demons, really all I’d done was stuff pillows in their mouths and stuff them in a closet. So I spent two months acknowledging all the feelings. I can't tell you how many people I probably freaked out by parking in front of an apartment for an entire afternoon, crying like a baby while I remembered living there. I put myself in so many fucked up situations, some of them I’m probably lucky to have survived. I was a horrible roommate, I was sexually out of control, and utterly aimless when it came to my studies. I felt adrift, with no one to give a shit what became of me, so I guess in some way it was a pathetically clichéd four years of 'reaching out.'

Whatever.

I made some appalling choices, drank and fucked and hid my way through 4 years of my life, flunked out of school, and then tried to forget it all happened. 3 years later I met BikeBoy. At the time it seemed like kismet, but looking back I’m not so sure I was ready for fate yet.

I spent some time recently reminiscing with an old friend from high school. It was interesting to hear their perspective on things that had happened when we were all 17. The lens of memory focuses differently for everyone. That old gem about there being 365 ways to see an elephant couldn't be truer. What that conversation made me really see, and maybe for the first time it actually clicked, was that rehashing painful memories long buried was really just pretty fucking stupid. All we have is right now. I am a product of my past, true, but am I also a slave to it? Can I forgive myself for being who I was then, without having to analyze myself into a coma of regret and shame and wasted time? Can I emotionally start again, and just hang onto the positive things I remember, trying to forge a new person out of those memories? I have to believe I can.

I’ll never forget what got me to where I am, but hopefully I can stop beating myself up for it. It is what it is. There are things I still want to do with my life, and it's already half over.

My new mantra: Hold your own, know your name, and go your own way.

Jason Mraz Details in the Fabric

Calm down
Deep breaths
And get yourself dressed instead
Of running around
And pulling all your threads and
Breaking yourself up

If it's a broken part, replace it
If it's a broken arm then brace it
If it's a broken heart then face it

And hold your own
Know your name
And go your own way
Hold your own
Know your own name
And go your own way

And everything will be fine

Hang on
Help is on the way
Stay strong
I'm doing everything

Hold your own
Know your name
And go your own way
Hold your own
Know your name
And go your own way

And everything, everything will be fine
Everything

Are the details in the fabric
Are the things that make you panic
Are your thoughts results of static cling?

Are the things that make you blow
Hell, no reason, go on and scream
If you're shocked it's just the fault
Of faulty manufacturing.

Everything will be fine
Everything in no time at all
Everything

Hold your own
Know your name
Go your own way

Are the details in the fabric (Hold your own)
Are the things that make you panic (Know your name)
Are your thoughts results of static cling? (Go your own way)

Are the details in the fabric (Hold your own)
Are the things that make you panic (Know your name)
Is it Mother Nature's sewing machine? (Go your own way)

Are the things that make you blow (Hold your own)
Hell no reason go on and scream (Know your name)
If you’re shocked it's just the fault (Go your own way)
Of faulty manufacturing

Everything will be fine
Everything in no time at all
Hearts will hold

Happy New Year!

Two thousand and nine. I will be 45 this year. Unfuckingbelievable. ~sigh~

This year I promise to:

1. love myself more
2. berate myself less
3. spend more time writing
4. feed my inner orchid: root, leaf and bloom
   

Thanks for coming along with me.

Draft Posts I Deleted in the Past Week

1. Mr. Unfinished Business - the email that came 17 years too late
   
2. Is it a Funeral for a Vibrator, or an excuse to shop?
   
3. 12 Things not to say to your husband when you're angry, and horny
4. I think we were supposed to have 'make-up' sex? No?
   

Jeez - I just realized how that list looks, all run together like that.

Um. Yeah. Therapy, here I come.

Sunday Quotes

• That's my SPIRIT!! says pickle, as he points to (on DVD) Stevie Ray Vaughn playing Tightrope... um, chills much? Have I given birth to the Dalai SRV?

TIGHTROPE