A season of storms

[amul]

Apple Martini asked me via IM today about (f)AD's live journal and my own. She wondered what it must feel like when we read each other's words, our feelings and attitudes about each other spelled out in pixels, there for all to see.

I think that part of this concern might be from the idea that the things I write would be surprising to her, or that her words might be a shock to me. It is not the case, there is no silence between us, no secrets we keep until we post them for all the world to see.

I think there are a lot of misconceptions about my LJ like this. When I first started this account, my plan was to use it as a simpler method of telling people who cared where I was, or what I was up to. I later realized that it had more power, more potential than this. At that time in my life, I avoided all serious discussions of emotions, and as I came out of that place, I realized that there were a great many people in my life who had wanted to be let in, wanted to know more about me than I had been comfortable showing, hurt creature that I was. I had slammed the door shut in all their faces, and I resolved to change that.

I opened myself up on LJ, offered as much insight into my heart and mind as anyone might ever want. Here, I write of all the things I never spoke of in my twenties. It is meant to be a feeble sort of amends for the rejections I had so often given. These people had known me for years, yet understood me not at all, so now I offer up all the understanding they could possibly ask for.

But as I continued to break free of my self-imposed isolation, I found myself out in the world, meeting strange and interesting people. A lot of these people I met only briefly, or see only at occasions where it is difficult to talk. They know me only through livejournal, and that must be a strange thing. I wonder if it is uncomfortable for them to have such access to a total stranger. I wonder how it must color their impression of who I am.

Still, I like it. I like that even My Ex could read of my life, my thoughts and fears, should she want to. I like that (f)AD can read my retelling of a conversation between us and let me know if she feels she was misunderstood. I do not understand how anyone can dislike me, as a few have chosen to do, because I see no reason to obfuscate my darker emotions. Sometimes, I'll ask (f)AD a question that has arisen during my introspection here, and she will laugh and say, "It must be true! You wrote on Live Journal!"

We are not so silly as to think that these words mean anything more than the things we felt at the time we write them. They are pixels, after all, not granite edicts from off a mountain. If she feels a thought misplaced, if I think a concept capable of refinement, we understand that there is still time. Humans are fluid creatures, after all, no matter how hard we try to encapsulate and define ourselves through policies, procedures and manifestos.

Just in this way, I feel there should be no shame, no sense of dread when I say that I enjoyed the drive to and from Pittsburgh more than I enjoyed the city itself. Truth be told, I was more interested in visiting the city than any particular friend there. I'd heard through the grapevine that My Ex no longer worked at the museum, and so I went to see it again, this building that was practically an extension of our home, so much time did we spend there. I hadn't realized how much I had missed Turrell's Danae, or the Yayoi Kusama rooms. Mme Turtle and I wandered around for about an hour before the place closed.

It would have felt like avoidance to do otherwise, so I drove past the house, the brick and wood edifice which had once held so much promise to me. When I first moved into my apartment, if people would compliment it, I would tell them, Well, yeah, I mean, it's not the dream home I spent six months picking with the woman I'd planned to spend the rest of my life with, but it's okay. This weekend, it was nothing but bricks to me.

I wandered through the Strip District, past storefronts deaf to my pleas of I'm only here for the day!, down through campus and into the park, and from there slowly, cautiously back to Brownsville Rd, where so much of my life happened in two short years.

The next day, (f)AD and I packed up the last of her stuff from her parent's home, dreadfully numb place that it is, and we visited mycatsellsclues and her new son. I stood in the corner as they talked, feeling myself a respectful observer of things men are rarely included in. I held the tiny boy for a bit, feeling the whole world narrow down to the eight pounds of precious life in my hands.

We got into the car and headed back to Chicago, and I was near tears. "Babies do that," comforted the girl who was once my muse, my joy, my inspiration. I ached, deep inside me in a way so literal that I could not comprehend how casually I had once described such pains as metaphor, I ached for a sense of community, for something permanent which I could rely on.

Everything is changing in my life, I'm not even friends with the people I'd known last year. The few friends I've made since then all plan to leave by the end of summer, except for those who I'm convinced will no longer be dating the Significant Others they are now. Roo and (f)AD and My Ex, such temporary things in my life. I don't even read the same kinds of books I once did.

I reached out and squeezed (f)AD's hand. I know you are meant for other places, I mewled. But it would be nice to always be able to reach out to you as easily as this.

"It cannot be," she said. "But I agree, it would be nice."

Then, just as when I picked her up last month, a storm broke out over top of us, and I could do nothing but concentrate on my need to move forward.

Comments

Move West!

[laura-alone.livejournal.com]

Come to California. Everyone's doin' it.

Re: Move West!

[amul.livejournal.com]

Chicago is the only place I've ever felt at home in. It'd be a shame to leave it now, just when I've got here.

[elissa-carey.livejournal.com]

In time, I hope to be as open as you are on LJ. I do want to share more of my inner life than I do currently, but right now is just not that time for many reasons. At least these days I'm happier than I have been.

[amul.livejournal.com]

This comment makes me happy for many reasons. I'm happy that the recent changes in your life have made you happy. I'm also happy that you like how open I am here, because it is one of those things that I sometimes need reassurance about.

[elissa-carey.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :) I do admire your openness, and it also satisfies a selfish desire to voyeuristically be part of my friends' lives. (It's an odd kind of people-watching for me. I don't know if it's because I'm a writer, or if that's what helps make me a writer... or if it has jack-all to do with writing, and I'm just weird that way.) I'd say that's a win-win scenario.

[amul.livejournal.com]

I didn't know you were a writer! You should critique the writing style of my posts, whenever you see something worth commenting on.

[elissa-carey.livejournal.com]

*grin* Amul, I've at least been writing for SR since '99. It's also what I was doing when Gremlin introduced us. (I write and have written for other RPGs as well. I've written other things, but not for publication or pay -- yet.)

Regardless, I'll try to offer up critiques, if you like. Thus far I like your writing in general; it's got a nod to stream-of-consciousness that helps bring people inside your head.

[amul.livejournal.com]

Yes, please offer critiques, no matter the content. I don't spend as much time as I'd like to, when it comes to improving my writing skills. I used to write the way I talked, so that people could hear my voice when they read my words. I feel like I've lost that.

Maybe I've just lost my voice. I don't know.

[mothburning.livejournal.com]

Well, this is a pretty post.

[amul.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to feel like you're getting the raw end of the deal. You've been so cathartic for me, and I feel like all I've given you is a place to crash.

[mycatsellsclues.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking quite a bit about your comment while you were here about community. Gads, if I only had time to type it all out. The wee boy doesn't allow for that, and typing one-handed is really, really tedious. But this has been running around my head since you posted, so I'd better get it out or it'll annoy me.

Community, as in what I've built that seemed to strike you, is fluid. I can count on it now, and it remains to be seen what will flow from it. Of course, that said, I have people I consider my family that are far from blood, that are the community I've built over the years, that are those that will always be there because they've remained through that test of time. When I moved back to Pgh, I left basically all of them behind, only to rediscover Z and her family. Like many weird families, we hadn't talked in over 10 years, but once back in one another's company, not a beat was missed. In prep for my baby, E told me, casually, yet seriously, "we'd been keeping all this stuff for you, we just didn't know it". That's the flow of community.

I guess what I mean is don't overthink it. When it's there, it's really there. Can't be forced, and you don't know you can count on it until you find that it's right there and you do. Kinda like how you and (f)AD are family. You've been through enough that there will always be that ease and resonance. It will matter less and less which city you happen you be in. You'll know she's there, and v.v.

___

You didn't have to tuck yourself in as an observer, though in several ways, it was appreciated. We moms didn't have a lot of time to cover quite a bit of ground, and I thank you for giving us the chance to have what we got.

Tangentially, I'm glad you got to meet the wee one. I'm happy you could feel that overwhelming rush that comes from holding eight pounds of nothing but potential. It's humbling and frightening and amazing all in one. It's suddenly everything we ever hope to be, and we pour that hope into these little vehicles.

Back to the boy then...

[amul.livejournal.com]

I'm more convinced than ever, after holding wee Benjamin, that I want a child in my life, once I'm ready. That's the trick, of course, figuring out when I'd be ready.

More than the kind of community you describe, it's a sense of permanence that I crave, which you so casually dismiss as inapplicable. What did that color quiz say? A guarantee against loss or disappointment.

I've been avoiding taking advantage of the support network which I had so carefully set up before she got here. I did that last night, went to a friend who had promised to be there for me when I needed her. She told me she's planning on moving to Atlanta, move in with a woman I introduced her to. I'm happy for her, but it hurts at the same time.

I want someone I can rely on to be there for me in the future. A community that will always welcome me. I guess that's the Pittsburgh crew, but they're so far away. I crave something within arms reach that gives me this kind of nourishment.

---

I know that I didn't have to maintain any kind of silence, and I spoke up when I felt I had something worth adding. But it was a very strange and real sense of being Inside the Menstrual Hut, as it were, that overcame me. Please do not think for a moment that I didn't love every minute of that.

[mycatsellsclues.livejournal.com]

It's not that I dismiss it as inapplicable, I just believe that it's not really possible. People die, people change, situations change, life has no guarantees, especially against loss or disappointment. I don't mean this to be bitter, I mean it to be realistic.

Maybe it's because in the past two years, I've watched amazing people bury people they love, one a devoted and brilliant husband, the other a teenage son.

As Tom Waits says, "You must risk something that matters."

That's was love is to me: worth the risk, and well worth it. Every day is a day I could lose everything that matters, from little Benjamin on down the line. Knowing that terrifies me, and also keeps it real, keeps me from missing the preciousness.

I hope you can find what you're looking for, and I do wish you the best, I just have never found it useful to force a guarantee from anything. Maybe it is also because I know I'll move again, far away from everything I know, making sure my home is wherever I am, and rebuilding my life around that.