introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- after 7 years and she didn't fall apart. - 11 october 2013 " i've got my heart here in my hands now / i've been searching for my wings some time / i'm gonna be born into soon the sky.."~antony & the johnsons today was a whirlwind. i don't think i caught my breath at work. my new position is a challenge and i'm so so up for it and thankful for the shake-up in routine. so far, so good. strange day, though, truly. it has caught me off guard. the night was wrapping up at work and starting to taper off a little bit and i wrapped up a nice conversation with a fella from tennessee. i love talking to america some days. i've feel like i get paid to talk to some pretty interesting people. even the angry ones seem to be less so after we're done talking. i can count on one hand the people that i feel i didn't connect with. a good feeling. during my conversation with this gentleman who i pictured to be around my father's age, my phone buzzed. i use my phone for work and i'm always checking it when it buzzes but my heart hiccuped a moment and my breath caught and i lost my train of thought. i listened to the call later, it was an audible moment. i hope that fella didn't notice it. i feel impolite just thinking about it. i've been enjoying my slower mornings on the new schedule. where i usually switch on npr or music or an audiobook while i'm getting ready, i've been preferring silence for the most part when i'm in the shower at least...i've just wanted to think. to take the time to where i am. it is so easy to relax in that bathroom. we've worked so hard on this house to make it a peaceful place...a place that we can nestle into when we come home from out there. the cold of the bathroom for all its ceramic tile and the giant tub and the generally large space. the sound of the water hissing from the shower head. the contrast of the hot-as-i-can-stand-it water, the steam in the air. every time i wash my hair, i think of my friend October Surprise...of a thing that he always points out when we see each other. as i massage my favorite shampoo into my hair, the scent of it brings me a decade of memories. "i can always tell how you are doing by the length of your hair. you're powerful when your hair is long." it always makes me blush because it is one of the kindest things anyone has ever said to me. it's true, i suppose. all those years with my buzzcut tragedies. when i browse backwards to that girl...what? 23? god, she was so so so in love. it was so long ago. but when i find pictures of me from then, i can see something different there in my eyes that isn't quite there anymore. there is a broken secret that was crushing so much of me. of my ability to accept love. of my ability to love and trust. i can see it in my own eyes. October has known me long enough to know the difference. to see the difference in my eyes. so rarely do we get to talk now but i cherish the times that i got to spend with him one on one. he has always been so kind to me. i think of him every single time i wash my ridiculous hair. the soap i use. the scent of me. i've been practicing focus. on being where i am. on living in my moments. i have found this to be so rewarding. the more time i take to be silent and to do what i'm doing...be that just watching birds or taking a shower or cooking. these have become such beautiful experiences when i can clear my head and focus. i find that taking the quiet time is making me so much more engaged in what i'm doing elsewhere, too. i'm becoming a better listener. i'm becoming more empathetic. this goes against everything i spent so many years walling up. robot heart, guys. each morning, however, i was distracted... from noticing my skin and the way it got goosebumps in the northeastern fall cold mornings...from paying attention to the delicious noticeable way my thick hippy tree bark herbal conditioner seems to slip from my hair all at once and and then down my back and the curve of my bottom and the back of my thighs and knees and swirls down the drain and the tangles unravel...from stopping to notice the cold of the room when i step out of the shower and reach for my towel. i've been distracted by a fleeting thought of one of my oldest dearest friends... brian is not so far away but i never get to see him. when i do see him, it's for fleeting moments. i haven't got a better excuse about not calling than that i talk on a phone all day and don't want to talk on a phone when i come home. its true, though. i have been writing more letters again. but i don't want to be this way. not with brian. there are some people that you cannot just say, yeah, they're not a part of my life anymore, i guess...things just go that way. people drift off and couple and disappear and still i trudge on but then i realize hey, i've got my life, too...and maybe they feel like i've forgotten them but i haven't. that's part of the over-vigilance thing. this thing where i guess i remember more things, more details. maybe this is why some things just cut so deep. even when it's scarred over and welded shut for forever, it still festers in some crevice. i miss every single person i've known. but i let them go because that is what life is. i get that now. so a gasp. a hiccup in the flow of easy conversation with a fix-it man from tennessee. that accent. that old-man sweetheart not trying to hit on me and actually let me teach him something cool. i love men who aren't afraid to be taught how to do something. who want to learn. no, you know. i love that about people, i think. that's always something that attracts me to the people in my life. they crave learning new things and then we all hive-mind. it was an enjoyable enough part of my job. seriously. but then the phone call came first. i pushed it to voicemail seeing that it was brian (!!!) who i've been thinking about randomly almost every day this week...i shot him a message to let him know i'd call him as soon as i was off duty because i wanted to hear his voice. he messaged me back. my breath caught for a second. just long enough for my stomach to knot and my voice to catch. like i said...it was audible on the recording. and i still feel rude as hell for that distraction because at this point, i shouldn't be distracted. good lord. "ok. i may be up. no big deal. i felt like i needed to tell you that i saw toby in LA the other week." gasp. "oh. nice." i mean? what can i even say to that? a lot, i guess. when i finally arrived home, he rang me up and we talked. he was in LA because his friend was going to be on jeopardy! and toby had seen he was in town and whatever whatever lunch. but we didn't talk about you. it was like an unspoken gentleman's agreement. i chuckled. what could anyone possibly have had to say about me anyway? nobody even knows who i am or where i am or what i do anymore and i love that. but it was sweet. and toby was his friend, too, i reminded him. they did have a relationship and when i was having meltdowns because i wasn't dealing with my shit, they went off together and hung out and that was good for toby. he didn't really have anyone here. having brian was good. i've never thought differently about it. i don't get why he was so nervous to tell me that he'd seen him. the conversation turned to brian and patrick moving in together this weekend and how in love they are. a moment of our talk landed on how things are with sean and he asked me if i was happy and i said yes and no. i wanted to tell him the truth about things but i couldn't. i wanted to hear more about brian and his happiness because he has worked so hard. i didn't want to talk about toby or sean or LA or anything...well, maybe except Irvine because it's quickly becoming my number 2 on my list of "places where i could land on the west coast". so i meant to come home tonight like i have been. i meant to work on my little writing project (did i tell you guys about the project i'm working on with some other old friends? hey, it's like having an assignment and it gets me writing and i'm kind of excited about it and more about it later) and maybe i'd jot something off here and talk some more about some of the things i wanted to write about here. i've got a list. i need to seriously write every waking hour. its all i think about doing. i'm getting there....and then she flits to law school dreams and blah blah...FOCUS. my focus has been thrown. "his new girlfriend looks just like you." "hahahaha...they always do." i left unsaid the rest of what i thought..namely that she's probably amazing. if she's anything like paula, i bet i'd like her. who would think that years later, i feel like if i ever landed in austin, i'd be looking that woman up for drinks..and maybe a place to crash. funny. i left unsaid that i know that other ladies look like me but that ultimately, even i looked like the one that came before me and the one that came before me. it's a type. i just never had a type, i guess. he always thought i did which is funnier still because i've landed with the type he'd expect but i'm honest and serious when i say that that's just happenstance. and the truth is, guys...i just don't know how this is going to end. or if it will. i've gained a lot of independence again in the last few months. i've loved putting myself out there at work and taking on new things. i've loved staying up at night and getting up early in the morning. i have to give sean credit, though...he is trying. he is trying really really hard. so am i. will i go west alone? there's a really really good chance. i just don't know. it was never that i don't love him so much as... so much as i don't have the capacity for that kind of love anymore. my heart has never recovered completely. i've bricked it up. i've put it in a lead box. i've put that box in a panic room with thick steel walls. i don't know what is happening to me but it is happening fast. my heart is opening up again in a way that i didn't suspect it could. i had my great romance. i was a kid. i blew it. he really blew it. maybe i wasn't his one great love...but he was mine and i live with that every day. i love sean. he is kind. he is good to me and thoughtful. he is occasionally extremely funny and i am attracted to him even more than i was in the beginning because he has been brave. he has gone to school. he is nearly done with his degree and it was not something that he would have even considered when we met. i am proud of him. i love sean but it is a different love. and maybe this is what brian was getting at all those years ago when he met someone after jonathan. he said it was different. i agreed. i knew then that loving toby was different than loving any of the men i'd been so deeply impossibly taken with previously. it was different. sean is different. the point is i'm happy that brian saw toby when he was in LA. sometimes, it's good to have someone come out of the woodwork of your past and remind you of times you might not think about anymore. i'm sure i'm not on the list of people he even considers on a daily basis which is fine by me. he is on my list along with every other person i've ever met. "when was the last time you talked to him?" that was when some tears came and i urged him to talk about something else. it was when my grandmother passed away. i fulfilled my promise. i told him because my grandmother had loved him. because my grandmother believed that someday, he was going to show up again. and that was it. so december will be 2 years. i wasn't crying because of toby, though...i was choking up because i miss my grandmother more than anyone i've ever missed but maybe that's because i can feel her absence on this planet in a real visceral way. thinking of her makes me cry...not always because i'm sad but sometimes because i see her in myself sometimes an i'm proud of that. the bottom line is this: i could never intrude on someone's life after so long and be so selfish. i remember when his ex-wife sent him letters and i (again, guys, i was 23...cut me a little slack, here) felt so threatened because he'd gone back to her before and maybe he would again. i just can't do that to another woman...but i bet she's way cooler anyway and probably the last thing she'd worry about because in my heart, i want to believe that he learned from all of this...that he learned that if he meets her, to never let her go and never fuck up again. i imagine that she is kind and funny and smart. fuck, i hope so. i think of him daily and i do so in a way that sends him my wishes for his happiness and my hope that someday, maybe our paths really will cross again. i really didn't ever expect that i'd never see him again. it doesn't seem like thats where it ends. it doesn't end like in the movies with a man walking away from you in an airport until you can't see him anymore. this in't the movies, guys. so it's been a weird tangle with my emotions tonight. there is a man sleeping in our bed right now (with his cat likely curled up keeping my side warm and nicely dusted with allergens) and like i've been saying since the beginning...love the one you're with. love the one you're with. love the one you're with. that's been my mantra and for a lot of months, it has been feeling very empty when i remind myself every day. he is a good man. he needs you, jones. maybe it isn't so empty. i want to believe that again. it's good to know toby is out there and that he's okay and that he seems really happy. it's okay. i'm coming out of my own chrysalis again. change is coming to my life and i'm embracing everything that falls in my path. the more i stay silent, the more i can listen. a robot heart feels nothing. it is a turin machine. it is mechanics. i have had no use for the softness of human emotion. lately, i feel everything in a way that makes me thankful. i've come a long way. my hair has grown long. i am powerful again and i feel like i'm worthwhile for possibly one of the first times in years. so i'm focusing on that. and i'm not falling apart. until, my loves, jones.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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