Laundry Day Musings

There are days that it really irritates me that I gave up smoking. Today is one of those days, though I don’t really know why. It’s not like anything is really wrong, or even changed that much since I packed up my life last July. I get up, I turn on my stereo, fix a cup of coffee and go about my daily duties as the resident maid. Today’s task was laundry. That’s always interesting, mostly because there is nothing like seeing a pair of the elephant butt jeans flapping in the sunshine to make you feel chipper dipper happy sappy dappy about yourself. This is of course on the tails of the worst swimsuit buying season EVER. I swear, it’s like the cosmos are conspiring to make an already humiliating task ten times as hard as it has to be. This year, besides size problems working against me, I also have a time limit, and distance malfunctions blocking the way, also, has anyone else noticed that... every swimsuit this season has a skirt and looks like something my Grandmother [bless her heart and rest her soul] would have worn?

I mean maybe I’m just testy about trying to look my actual age rather than a school teacher since someone asked my mother if I was her sister. I know that my mother does not look like she’s pushing 55, but she also does not look like she’s is anywhere near 22 either. I love her, with my whole heart, she is the reason I am living and breathing, but I cannot think of a single 22 year old daughter who wants someone thinking their 53 year old mother is their sister. No one wants that, also, I don’t know many 22 year olds that want their signature “look” to remind people of school teachers, unless they happen to be, you know, a school teacher.

To top it all off, Fred the Fat Roll [which is named such because I needed something to yell at while trying on pants one day] is adding to all this drama because he refuses to cooperate with the suit styles I like. I mean When I wear it I’m going to be around either my cute skinny friends with metabolisms like meth heads, or lounging by the pool while on vacation with my mother, her best friend, and two preteen boys [I will kill myself by the way the first time anyone asks if Con or Forester are mine]. I want to look as cute as humanly possible if I’m not going to get to be with my peers partying hardy and killing brain cells left and right, and it will be absolutely impossible to look cute in aforementioned Granny suits- with billowy ruffles and skirts that somehow make my thighs look bigger. Explain that one to me Style Divas.

Anyway, today I was bemoaning and huffing about all of this [the latest reject-o suit came last night priority mail] as I was hanging out the laundry [there is nothing quite like a freshly sun dried towel to make you think Spring is around the corner]. As I was standing there, with my elephant butt [which my mother later laughingly informed me was too flat to REALLY be called elephant butt] jeans, when it hit me how nice it would be if we had lifestyle washing machines. A big people sized machine you could just slip into anytime you started feeling the stains of life setting in on you. It would wash, dry, fluff, and fold you back into your true self when you lost sight of it. The only alteration needed to the cycle would be the discontinuance of sorting by color, as we should let our shared stains bleed together. It would also always be set on delicate, just because life is rough enough without going into overdrive on the spin cycle. And after all of that you’d come out fresh and pinky clean with a new outlook on life.

Some people argue getting your hair done and blowing money on a pair of shoes you don’t need can do the same thing for you. Generally I would agree but paying for school out of pocket has somehow managed to leave me afflicted with a terrible case of buyers remorse, laced with a side of practicality. Somehow buying a pair of sixty dollar pumps I will never really actually wear because they kill my feet, legs, and back just isn’t as satisfying as it used to be. If I had the Lifestyle washer I bet that would be one of the first stains it lifted.

Meditations

In the last few days it has occurred to me that.. for the first time in a very long time I am not in love, or like, or longing. I am completely unattached without eyes or feelings or thought of anyone. It's a strange thing you know, to not be in love having jumped from bad relationship to bad relationship over the last several years. I mean I really can't think of a time since I was thirteen that I haven't been involved some how with someone, sometimes multiple "someones". Prior to all of that there was Ben. God I loved that boy, from the time I was in first grade until my eighth grade year, I was completely tore up over him. I thought someday we'd grow up and get married, we used to talk about me touring Europe after graduation, and meeting him on his mission. It never dawned on me that there would be inherent problems with the difference of faith, when I looked at Ben I saw everything I ever thought I wanted in a boy... of course then we got to High School and I found out was a low down dirty double crossing dog he was. That was a part blow, because up to that point he had been boy perfection. Of course, the feeling generally wasn't returned. I was his friend, we walked to our Mothers' classrooms everyday after school, shared a coke, talked, but he never saw anymore than that.

Sometimes I miss the things I used to believe about him. I miss thinking that someone was true and honest. I miss believing in the untouched sort of love. I think he's married now, probably has three kids. It was the same story with Jared, only, you know, Jared was an ass from the get go. Through the grapevine I've heard was a douche he actually is to his wife. That's one of those... thank God for unanswered prayers. There is no way I would rather be in a dead end marriage right now than where I am. Actually, that's what I tell myself when I feel these walls closing in. That is my manta, I could be married with screaming rugrats. I know that I am maternal by nature, but I've said it before and I'll say it again, there is too much damn crazy in my family to ever bring a child into that. Also, given the men that are attracted to me, it would be a whole other level of loser crazy to deal with. I have no desire to repeat my mother's mistakes.

Anyway, like I was saying, this is the first time really, in at least six years, that I haven't been emotionally connected to someone in that sense. I mean there isn't even that non-relationship element to deal with anymore. It's finally all out of my system, because I finally care more about my mental well being than his corny ass lies and lines. No he in particular of course, just in general, of all the he's and she's I've known in the not so distant past. Even Jess, who I thought I could have maybe had a thing for, it was fleeting. It isn't what I want or need right now. I know that all the times before it was more about filling the void, the fear of having to face myself alone. That doesn't mean I didn't love or care about the people I was with, there are some of them I know could never have hurt me so much if I didn't love them, but it was always easier to want myself when someone else wanted me- and the more someone's the better. Of course it was easier to pull off when I was the witty talented 16 year old screwing around with boys way too old to be good for her.

It's different now. I don't know if it's really that I'm old, or if it's just I've done so much damage to myself that I feel older than I am. For years I have thrown away the best I had on people who were not worthy, who didn't deserve one iota of the devotion I wasted on them. I am coming to grips with this more and more the more I talk to my sister and see myself in Steph [of the hidden Emo-nation]. The thing that's weird is that... I'm not bitter about it anymore. It's not like I'm sitting here thinking "I deserve so much more than I was given", its more like "Wow, why would anyone throw away the best of themselves of people like that?" These well adjusted thoughts throw me off balance in my crazy world. I think in a sense though Montana and Pix were right. Fate brought me out here for a reason, and that reason, simply put, is because when I had everything else going on it was too loud to hear these things.

For the last four years I have been running on empty, pushing myself over one hill after another. Life shouldn't be that hard. Life shouldn't be a daily struggle. Life shouldn't be about suffering, or sinning, or lowering myself to be "worthy". It's sick in a way, how much easier it is to just be sick. Why is that? Why do we let ourselves believe the devil we know has to be better than the one we don't? Why is misery the easy choice in this equation? For so long I've let the belief I had to be strong for everyone else overrule the fact I should have been being strong for myself. Why is it we want to hold everyone else up? How is it we come to believe fighting their demons is somehow more important than fighting out own? I can think of a very small, tried and true group of people that deserve that from me, but I was giving it away to everyone.

The answer comes to me in small ways, in little ideas as I wash clothes or cook dinner. When I'm laying in bed or reading a book. The truest thing I know, without a doubt, is that I have spent the majority of my life waiting for someone else to do what is best for me. I have waited for someone to love me enough to put what they want aside. I have scarified myself time and time again, thinking eventually someone would stop me, would love me enough to say "No, not this time". Which, really, when you think about it is completely stupid. I don't know where it comes from, sometimes I think it was something that was just born in me.

I believe that more and more when I look at my little sister. We were raised completely differently, in different parts of the world, sometimes it felt in completely different times.. and yet there is this thing that we share, that runs so deep in us I can't remember a time it wasn't there. I wonder sometimes if Dad ever sits back and really sees who we are, the lives we live and the part he did or didn't play in that. Then I realize I am giving him too much credit. He can't think like that, it goes against his hazy nature. If he were to think about it would mean admitting something was amiss.

Oblivion is almost harder to give up than self destruction.

Crazy [A (crappy) Poem]

Complicated, twisted, intense
Crazy love
Crazy hate
Crazy together
Crazy apart
Constant Crazy

Built my life on crazy
Crazy Pain
Crazy Tears
Crazy Laughter
Crazy Fears
Constant Crazy

Willing, waiting, anticipating
Crazy doubt
Crazy fights
Crazy proof
Crazy nights
Constant crazy

Clinging still to crazy
Crazy forward
Crazy back
Crazy falling
Crazy breaking
Constant crazy done.

Moop

Random quicky update to let anyone who is reading know I am alive and kicking, sort of. Real updates will start again shorty. <3