tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11981413254628465872024-03-21T20:04:50.987-07:00Erin's DiaryI'm going to write whatever's on my mind. Be forewarned. Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.comBlogger71125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-88074298374561124072019-10-04T09:15:00.002-07:002019-10-20T19:32:07.597-07:00A phone call with Fred(Drafted October 2015)<br />
<br />
<br />
It's a Saturday. Fred just texted asking if he could call. I replied sure.<br />
<br />
"I'm walking down a street, don't even know where I am. I don't know what's what. What, man? Whaaaaaaat?"<br />
<br />
I tell him the assistant principal at my school gave me a dirty look for my halloween costume yesterday.<br />
<br />
"Betcha she smells like an oily fish."<br />
<br />
I tell him it's okay, she didn't say anything so that means I got away with it. Fred starts talking about his girlfriend. I think he's starting to accept her.<br />
<br />
"So she wants to watch movies last night, like every night, and these things, in the movie last night, when the ice melted, these things are eating your eyes."<br />
<br />
"When what ice melted, what do you mean?" I ask.<br />
<br />
"In the movie. Stupid movie. Hundreds of people died, the town was being destroyed by these things. The people with the right technology hid and saved themselves. Through the whole movie they kept trying to shoot them with guns. It didn't work. At the end, finally, this guy is driving a tractor trailer, puts bait on the back of it, gets the monster to chase him, and when the monster grabs the bait, the truck goes off a ledge, and somehow lands alright, but lands on top of the monster and it exploded the monster. The truck driver though, he drives off. He saved everyone, gets the girl, everybody's happy. So that was a three hour or something movie I think. There were a couple of pretty women in there that kept it tolerable. I guess. One girl who was a virgin at the beginning of the movie stayed a virgin the whole way through. So there was something for everybody."<br />
<br />
"My dad watches lifetime movies with my mom," I say.<br />
<br />
"Yeah it wasn't so bad. It's just life. It eats me. I need to find a way to unfuck myself. The days just suck ass. I mean she was talking about dinner at noon. My only peace is taking a walk. I made friends with a cop this morning. They were digging a gas light and I walked up to the cop and showed him my lighter and said "whaddya think? should I do it?" He just laughed. I think he was a little nervous but I talked to him. He realized I wasn't gonna hurt a damn fly. I told him I was from Riverside, RI where <i>real</i> people lived. He got a little worked up over that. Real people. He's from Taunton where nobody's breathing. Busted his balls. But he took it like a man."<br />
<br />
"That's good. You probably entertained him."<br />
<br />
"Kinda worked. He had to get back to work and I kept on walking. Some of the best scenery of the state in this hell whole, I tell ya. There's this abandoned storefront that makes this city look like nothing, then I'm in the cemetery and I'm looking at mush, and a wetland, and a mountain somewhere too far away, and there's some birch trees, where you know its gonna get icy cold."<br />
<br />
"Where is Taunton?" I ask.<br />
<br />
"Remember we took that drive past Bobby A's that one day? Down route 44?"<br />
<br />
"Yes," I lie.<br />
<br />
"That's Taunton, that's where I'm living now. It's a long ride. Out to no-man's land. Worse than Tupper really. It's like I'm out at the edge of the earth right now. A lot of black people moved out here and they're happy, they're nice. One good thing I guess. They're out there and they're saying hello to me, they're decent. I talked to a black guy this morning getting a coffee at Cumbie's, and he was alright."<br />
<br />
"That's good."<br />
<br />
"I tried to buy chocolate today and God must really not want me happy. They're cutting a little out and charging a little more. I can't even afford to buy it anymore. Oil goes down, but chocolate has to go up? I don't get it. I'm gonna have a virtual chocolate. I'm telling you. Imagine it and put it in my mouth. Take that God. I'm not buying it. I'm still enjoying it! Hear me? Hear that!"<br />
<br />
He makes some chewing noises and moans.<br />
<br />
"The game's over you know? Somebody's gotta make a stand."<br />
<br />
He reminds me of those speakers he sold on Craigslist the other day for $100.<br />
<br />
"Didn't even get a chance to use them really. And they're gone. Idiot who bought them didn't even know he was robbing me. Thought he was doing me a favor. Asswipe."<br />
<br />
He suddenly jumps off his soap box to tell me a bad joke.<br />
<br />
"Should I take some boxes of cereal and stab myself with them? Cereal killer."<br />
<br />
I laugh.<br />
<br />
"I did walmart the other day. That was fun," he says.<br />
<br />
"What do you mean? You parked the motorhome and slept in the parking lot?<br />
<br />
"No, shopping. They have groceries there now too. Mostly food though, we bought. We hit every aisle though."<br />
<br />
"Why every aisle?"<br />
<br />
"I don't know why. I was drifting away, wondering about other things, I'm getting really good at manufacturing a mental defense, for anything, any situation, and I go shut down and say oh okay, alright. But I'm looking stuff over in the store and just distracting myself from hell, you know?<br />
<br />
"Today I took out vinegar from under her kitchen sink and drank some. She almost freaked out when I took a sip, and she's like well don't drink that vinegar it's old. And I was like so what, it's old and in a jar and covered with a lid. It's sitting at room temperature and its vinegar and I'm drinking it. I'm telling you. She reminds me of my old man. If there was ever such a thing as a complete consumer, make that box look like what its supposed to, and she buys it. Did you see the vitamin c picture I sent you?"<br />
<br />
He goes off on how she bought flavored vitamin c powder for him. He had asked her to buy plain vitamin c powder. "I don't even know how she found it," he said. "I'd never seen that before. The colors on the box and all the flash and nonsense. Barely even saw it said Vitamin C until after looking it over for a minute.<br />
<br />
"I better start walking home now. She's gonna be like where have you been? And I'm gonna be like I don't know! I get up and I move!<br />
<br />
"I'm a complicated monkey. There's no doubt about it. I don't let people off easy for one thing. They pay. Everyone knows I'm here, that's for sure.<br />
<br />
"I need these walks. I mean, that's all I'm doing. I did start doing pushups. I'm gonna go have a smoke. I've gots ta go."<br />
<br />
Okay, call me later if you want, I said.<br />
<br />
"Not me. The motorhome. It's gotta go. At least the engine."<br />
<br />
"No offers on your engine yet?" I ask.<br />
<br />
"No not from my ad, but I talked to some guy today about wanting to tear down the RV and he seemed really interested. Started asking me about it. I tell him I'm reluctant to strip it cuz it only has 83,000 miles. But then this guy starts acting like it was old and I should strip it. What a loser. He gets talking about his cars. He's got 3 muscle cars, all fast and testosterone, not just your drive around thing. I've driven those types before. This one kicks your ass, another gives you a buzz when you press the pedal. I built one once. The red car. Remember I showed you that picture?"<br />
<br />
"Yes," I lie.<br />
<br />
"That thing was bolted together more than once. And before that I had a hatchback wagon, it was fast, there were 2 speeds, low and drive, but I beat up a Porche with it around town one time. Wag racing. He made it known he wanted to play and I was like You Do? And I hit it. That thing took off like a rocket and I watched this guy trying to downshift as I was beating his ass, and I look at him and he's shifting, and I'm like that's dumb, and then he acted like he was gonna pass me at the next light we stopped at. And I pushed the gas, made that noise, vroom-vroom, and I was like dude you're done. I just kept gaining and gaining after that. He finally gave up, pretended it wasn't a race after that. I bet he was angry cuz it was a wagon. Loved that thing. It had more weight in the back and it could carry my keyboards. I'd pull that wagon up at gigs to unload equipment and people would be like what the hell is that thing. They couldn't make it out, some thought an old BMW or Jaguar. But it wasn't. Just a Volvo ES 1800 wagon. But they're pretty, those wagons. They're gorgeous, just beautiful. Really clean lines and a sporty look."<br />
<br />
"So you gonna change the clocks back tonight," I ask?<br />
<br />
"I won't be doing it. My android phone will do it itself. She'll do her dirty microwave. God everything in her apartment is a mess. I cleaned the tub, you know, which was a mess, her bathroom sink was full of hair and I took it apart to get the pipes clean. But I laughed when she suggested Drain-o. There's some hair collected in there, and it's just a stupid ball, so just take the pipe out and get the hair the hell outa there. At first I didn't have any of my tools, and the other day I went to the RV and then the storage unit and got some tools and got what I needed but it became a real nightmare when she and her son couldn't even muster up a pair of pliers. I figured they'd have at least that. But I guess I'm a moron for assuming anything these days.<br />
<br />
"What a joke. Nothing's going on on Halloween on a Saturday. Life keeps getting stranger all the time. I've already been thinking about what a shitty day my birthday's gonna be this time. It's looking pretty bleak. I guess I better get used to living in my skin somehow though. Life bites it."<br />
<br />Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-45267881576277716802018-01-19T06:19:00.001-08:002018-02-06T09:02:55.137-08:00The Story of Geoff: Ch. 9<u>Recovery</u><br />
<br />
It's January 2018. <br />
<br />
I've
made no official resolutions this year. I tentatively resolved in
November that I would purchase a gym membership but that was a joke.<br />
<br />
I
see a psychiatrist regularly now. My parents attended a meeting with me
a few weeks ago. My dad spoke one sentence and my mother carried on
most of the dialogue, mainly defending me against a host of diagnoses,
but at the end of our session it was quite obvious we have a family
history of mental illness and I'm going to try a new medication. Because
apparently Topamax, Trazodone, and Klonopin are not sufficient.<br />
<br />
I
tried a second antidepressant in addition to Trazodone last winter but
it made my hair fall out so I quit taking it. I also tried Seroquel
last summer, which robbed me of five weeks of sanity, and the memories
of it's zombie-like effects haunt me still.<br />
<br />
People with
Bipolar shouldn't take antidepressants, I've since learned. But I still
take Trazodone for sleep. Bipolar makes it difficult to sleep and every
couple months I hit a month of waking up at 3 a.m. and laying in bed
wide awake with racing thoughts til morning. I recently was diagnosed
with Bipolar Depression. I've learned that I have a genetic
predisposition to this disease, and that it's a real thing. Certain life
events can trigger it into existence and my doctors all agree I have
it. I was in denial at first but I'm starting to see myself through
their lens. <br />
<br />
I'm supposed to try Latuda next. Side
effects include nausea, drowsiness, and inability to stop moving. I'm
rooting for drowsiness. I don't mind feeling down. It's become a
familiar and comfortable feeling. This drained out mellow nothing-to-do
feeling. This must be how a heroin injection feels. Empty. Soulless.
Like getting to die without having to say good-bye. Floating around and
watching the world go by. <br />
<br />
Geoff got married. I
found out from Google. Up popped a page of he and her,
together, with their wedding registry and the immaculate wedding venue
photos. I looked at the date. July 29, 2017. I swallowed hard. The few
fleshy edges of my non-calloused
heart turned to stone and a numbness covered me. <br />
<br />
She
looked charming and cute in their pre-wedding announcement photo, and I
could see in his face he was happy. He looked slim and healthy, unlike
when he was dating me. She must inspire him to be a better man, I
thought. I couldn't help but be happy for Geoff, for a moment, until I
read the elaborate reception details, and imagined their magical day of
bliss, shared with the family I'd lost, but I saw they belonged
together. There was no way she didn't return to
him all the joy I'd robbed him of, tenfold. Our break-up had
surely been a gift to him. He was better off now. I felt a much overdue
sense of closure and had a confused happy-sad feeling come over me. Then I began to cry.<br />
<br />
Geoff
never in our decade-long relationship spoke an unkind word to me. Not
once. Lord knows I belittled him almost daily. I can't believe he
tolerated it all those years, and was willing to marry me at the end of
it all. After we called off our own wedding and he was openly dating again, I recall asking him
what kind of girl he was looking for, and he told me, "I just want to
find someone who is nice to me."<br />
<br />
And here she was. The nice girl. I stared
tearfully at the picture of Geoff and Sonia and I could sense instantly this girl was in every way
kind. Sometimes you can just read kindness in someone's eyes. Geoff had
those kind eyes too. He deserved her. She deserved him. They were truly a perfect pair. I cried myself to sleep as I pondered their
amazin relationship and fairy tale wedding and how they would grow old
together, sitting on porch chairs.<br />
<br />
I woke up the next
morning and swept the decomposing ashes of my heart and soul into
some coherent blob and stood erect out of bed. I walked to the bathroom
and peed. I washed my hands and stared in the mirror. My face was empty
and pale
and sad. I splashed some water on my face and pulled my pony tail out. That didn't help at all. Somehow I looked like I'd aged five years overnight. I went directly back
to bed and covered up and cried some more.<br />
<br />
It's
January, I remind myself. It's the armpit of winter. In the Adirondacks.
And I hate the cold. I never learned to ski nor do I have a desire to.
If I were an animal I'd be a bear. A lonely non-mating bear.<br />
<br />
I try to find something hopeful to grip onto in my mind. There's pill bottles all around and all I want to do is sleep the rest of my life away. Then I remember my
mom's eldest sister, Patricia, who had just lost her husband of some fifty years this past year. They raised three beautiful daughters and shared
in the birth of six grandchildren together before his passing. He was ill for almost ten years as she became his caregiver and watched him slowly die. She truly became the embodiment of love for him, as I know is the case with many couples when one goes before the other. But for her it was particularly difficult.<br />
<br />
Then through
some strange twist of fate, Patricia's ex-fiance from college tracked
her down just months after my uncle's passing. He wanted to return to her a ring that he gave her when they were dating over fifty years ago. She gave it back when she broke up with him when he went overseas to fight in a war. It was a sad story and all, but she had moved on and never had any contact with him again. The ring somehow got stashed in a wall in the house where he grew up and when he tracked down Patricia to
give it to her, they reconnected and are presently engaged.<br />
<br />
What's even neater is he was even able to track down her old engagement ring at the pawn shop he originally pawned it at over fifty years ago, too. I think the stone was separated from the band so he just had the stone refitted to a new band. What a story. His wife died of cancer six years ago and he has grown kids as well. They both lived out their lives and found their way back to one another at the end. <br />
<br />
So to ease myself as I came to terms with the fact Geoff is a married man now, I remembered this story.
But I have to stop writing about Geoff for now. The story of Geoff
waits. Waiting for another chapter that may never come. Love is a funny thing. Love can grip something so
tight it suffocates the very life out of it. Or love can choose to let
go. Surrender is an open armed gesture, and I stand here in the
metaphysical realm barehanded, empty, waiting on life to
someday return something to me that I've lost, once I'm deemed worthy of
receiving it back.<br />
<br />
Time is my friend. It's a vehicle that
will carry me to old age, where I'll near the end of this rocky road and
possibly figure out what it takes to make myself worthy of being loved
again.<br />
<br />
I heard about a study where people in their 80's
reported the highest level of life satisfaction and personal
contentment, so I'll shoot for making it that far, so long as I'm in
good health. I wouldn't mind a companion in the meantime, just for company now and then. Someone with which to watch the leaves fall and share meals and watch movies and laugh. That would be nice. If not, that's okay too. I'm
okay with doing those things alone.<br />
<br />
Perhaps Geoff will someday fly back to the 'dacks, and in old age together we'll perch among the Will Rogers community or be roomies at the Dechantel.<br />
<br />
If at the final end of one of our lives we got to spend just one autumn together, caring one for another, like I witnessed last Fall when a dying man I cared for was reunited with his estranged ex-girlfriend after calling out her name just days before he passed, "Nancy, Nancy..." If that's how our story ends, that would be entirely meaningful to me.<br />
<br />
Geoff I need you to know I never wanted to part ways forever. That was unimaginable. I wish we could have just taken a long long break. It's impossible to grieve you when you're still alive. Please store some stories up your sleeve for me, in case our paths cross again. Remember me and the good times, please. Remember our journey
because there's lots of it I've already forgotten.<br />
<br />
And if our paths never cross again I'd like to think we're both better off for having had them cross once. Bye for now. You will always be my best friend.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-9912442327327111172017-12-10T01:52:00.001-08:002017-12-11T07:33:40.474-08:00The Story of Geoff: Ch. 8<u><b>Guy </b></u><br />
<br />
The 1960's arguably saw the most drastic shift in how music influenced the social and political climate of our times in the past century. Imagine being a young man, fixing your eyes on the future, but without worry because music eases your doubts.<br />
<br />
You're invincible, for starters. Youth is on your side. The year is 1964. The Beach Boys have released the classic and timeless "I Get Around" with lyrics as careless as "I'm a real cool head," and "I'm making real good bread." It's silly. Borderline dumb. But who cares. It's fun. The melody and harmonies are there and hey, these guys are gettin' around. What's not awesome about that? The song is catchy. It makes you feel good. In fact, all the Beach Boys songs do. They don't write sappy love songs. <i>Caroline No</i> is probably as sad as it gets, but it's still a pretty song. I always thought it was "Carol I know" and it was a song about a man telling Carol he understood what she and they were going through. So it never seemed sad to me, 'til I listened to it again just now, but I still felt happy hearing it. So there. The Beach Boys write happy, feel-good songs.<br />
<br />
It's also 1964 when The Beatles (introduced once on the Ed Sullivan Show as <i>These youngsters from Liverpool</i>), release "I Want To Hold Your Hand", and women everywhere (at least the ones that recovered from Elvis-induced heart attacks) become sex-crazed swooners at the thought of a guy wanting to hold hands. All of a sudden anything the Beatles say or do or wear (or sing) becomes the benchmark for sexy. And girls everywhere want it all. And if I remember middle school correctly, I know what hand holding leads to. It leads to sex. Not that I had sex in middle school. But it gets the ball rolling. Those butterflies in your stomach.<br />
<br />
The Beatles changed the playing field for young men in the 1960's. Guys could get a mop-top haircut or learn to play guitar, or even better, learn a Beatles song to entice their lover. They could wear ankle-length boots with a fitted toe to school or a paisley shirt or pants with floral patterns to a party to look desirable or suit up in all white for a formal event and girls would flutter. Gone were my grandmother's days, when attraction came with poetry and bashful requests for first dates at the movies. Buying flowers, walking her to class, carrying her books - these acts became secondary. My mother even told me that she was disgusted by a guy in high school who tried to carry her books to class. She said what attracted her to my dad was that he ignored her. She found allure in that. And if you're curious what their marriage is like, 37 years later, not much has changed. The only thing they do is watch Fox News and fart on the couch together.<br />
<br />
Old fashioned romance, even reflected in the music written today, started to become endangered. Now women wanted their ears tickled and their eyes hypnotized. Playing hard-to-get was taken to a new level. A sexual revolution sparked a sense of freedom for women and men alike to be with multiple partners, to engage in homosexuality with less shame, to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs. In a nutshell, people did what they wanted. Social and religious and cultural constraints loosened. <br />
<br />
Geoff's father, a budding young professional during this time where women wanted it all, wanted to be a guy that could offer it all. His name was Guy, and he was raised by his grandmother, likely missing out on the emotional spoils a mother and father could offer. Later in life, material possessions and wealth became his love currency, which he shared generously with his family and extended family when Barbara brought others' children into their home, and even through their help in taking care of me when I was in a pinch. <br />
<br />
Guy played Division 1 football out West before being accepted into law school. From there he built himself a successful practice and later in his thirties wed Barbara and had three children by the age of forty-five.<br />
<br />
He told a story about a football player injury at the dinner table one night while the whole family was gathered round. <br />
<br />
"One game, a player was taken out after breaking his femur bone. Does anyone know the sound a femur bone makes when it breaks? It's extremely loud! The whole stadium went silent. It was as if a very large tree snapped in half."<br />
<br />
We all continued to chew our food, reluctantly. <br />
<br />
"The femur is the largest bone in the body," he added. <br />
<br />
Nothing seemed to bother Guy. Ever. He was trapped in a 60's mind mist. Still. After all these years. As if <i>Don't Worry Baby</i> still played on rerun in his mind. The morning fog that 60's music emitted must have generated a vapor only those who didn't witness the 60's could see from afar off. Like I watch these old(er) successful professionals with hippie mindsets and wonder how they balances work and play all their lives. I'm just sitting here feeling too agoraphobic to go check the mail most days, let alone get a job or have a social life.<br />
<br />
I didn't grow up in such a hopeful, happy-music generation. I grew up with Kurt Cobain, Dave Matthews, and Phish. And those were the better bands. I'm trying to suppress Madonna, Mariah Carey, Boyz 2 Men, TLC, Ace of Base, Hanson, and Creed.<br />
<br />
Women's rights in the 90's were more about abortion than equality and political wars were more about trading blood for oil than liberating oppressed countries. Not to say Vietnam was completely pointless. I guess all decades have their meaningless wars. But the 90's were so apathetic compared to the 60's. No hippie love. Just cancer and suicide and instant messenger to replace human conversation, tapered jeans to make the tops of my legs look extra fat, and lots of cigarettes and anorexia to combat those tapered jeans. If my memory serves me. I got gypped. <br />
<br />
But the 60's cloud that followed Guy well into his later adult life kept him up in the air on some kind of unnatural high. A trance-like haze that even closet hippies walked through unknowingly and got trapped in. Maybe they didn't see it, but what a beautiful blindness. Growing up in the 60's distorted the reality of what really was going on in the world. Truly 60's songs served as escapism music, even if many reflected the political climate or used it to inspire people to be more kind. And people needed this. They needed an escape from the horrors outside our borders. I would have lost myself in it, too. The feel-good music. The feel-good generation. But instead I'm a product of the damage it created. It created an American dream delusion. The idea one could live on borrowed money. Do what you want. Go after your dreams. Now look what happened.<br />
<br />
Suddenly Guy's generation had everything. Things that <i>my</i> generation now has to pay for. Few generation X's I know will get beyond student loans. Forget owning anything. All we own is our parents' debt. And if we're lucky, college debt. Then comes credit card debt. And if we're really lucky, and qualify, a home mortgage.<br />
<br />
I digress. Guy has paid his loans. But other products of the 40's, 50's, and 60's have not. Which is why children today will have a very hard time even dreaming.<br />
<br />
The only downfall I really saw to Guy being a bit stuck in the 60's was his wardrobe. <br />
<br />
I've seen him wear corduroys straight out of a Syms or Klopfensteins likely purchased fifty years ago, since it was cool to wear worn down corduroys then. His informal and dated style of dress provokes one to wonder if he is not only stuck in the 60's but believes at all times it is Sunday afternoon.<br />
<br />
Guy also has mixed priorities when it comes to caring for living things. He needs to snap out of the <i>do what you want</i> mentality, at least when it's dinnertime. On more than two occasions I witnessed the underhanded serving of <b>handfuls</b> of sirloin and other fine cuts of meat to the family dogs that sat drooling beside Guy at the dinner table while sophisticated humans ate with napkins in our laps. This was appalling, to say the least. And this coming from someone who lives in Tupper Lake!<br />
<br />
I not only thought of starving children around the world when this happened, but of my father at home who would have lit up like a Christmas tree if I'd brought him home even a scrap of one of those fine pieces of meat, and to hear his big stinky dogs swallow those pieces whole without even taking the time to chew and enjoy the meat one bite at a time? What a waste! Why not throw the meat straight into the compost! It made me so angry, but the anger dissipated quickly when I took my next bite of steak dipped in mashed potatoes, gravy, and green beans, and followed it up with a sip of Shiraz. <br />
<br />
Road trips with Guy and Barbara were always fun. I enjoyed Guy's childhood spirit which always came out on family vacations. Guy kept the tunes rolling and always sang along. If we weren't listening to Carol King or The Carpenters or The Drifters or The Supremes or James Taylor, it was most definitely the Beach Boys. February 2002, the middle row seat of the Ford Expedition Geoff and I sat, Sophomore and Junior in college respectively, on our way to Montreal, listening to Guy belt out "Barbara Ann" seemingly more to annoy his wife than to enamor her, as she slurped at a fountain soda. We all had snacks in our laps. It was a rare moment Geoff's family went without food at arms-reach. But in-between the slurps and burps and stories and songs, Guy would take a moment to educate whoever cared to listen about whatever was on his mind at whatever given moment.<br />
<br />
"Exciting news Geoffrey. The APA has recently approved the construction of cell phone towers in the mountains of the Adirondack Park so long as they don't jeopardize the Adirondack scenery" (chuckles). How do you suppose the map surveyor on that team will fair at those approval meetings?<br />
<br />
"Oh, yeah, he'll have to think creatively for sure!" <br />
<br />
"I hope he is prepared to draw up several drafts!"<br />
<br />
"Oh, for sure, a whole bunch."<br />
<br />
"Talk about job security. Approving this policy approves everyone's wallet for the next 5 years."<br />
<br />
"Why don't they bury them underground?" I interject.<br />
<br />
"They have to be out in the open air - we did an experiment at school." Barbara replies.<br />
<br />
"Geoff did you cover the wood pile and ever get around to putting air in your mother's tires?"<br />
<br />
"Yes-"<br />
<br />
"Because if that tarp is not securely fastened and flies off that wood pile and we get that storm all that wood is good for nothing-"<br />
<br />
"I covered the wood and fastened it!"<br />
<br />
"And mother's car is not for you to borrow unless you can be responsible for it."<br />
<br />
"I put air in the tires!"<br />
<br />
"Changing the oil. Checking the lights. Fluids. Gas. Insurance. Lots of responsibility-"<br />
<br />
"Dad."<br />
<br />
"...<i>You see 'em wearing their baggies, huarachi sandals too, a bushy bushy blonde hairdo, surfin' USA..."</i><br />
<br />
Geoff's dad didn't quite reach the falsetto of Brian Wilson but made an effort that fooled the listener into thinking he did. He was quite brilliant at fooling people this way. Accomplishing the task at hand with autoschediastical fervor. The way he told stories, he could have convinced a conspiracy theory skeptic that Bigfoot existed and that he'd personally nursed him during his military training days in Madison County, Illinois. No questions asked. This is the effect Guy had on his story-telling listeners.<br />
<br />
Sometimes I think Guy convinced himself that his big fish stories were true. But even with potential embellishments the ends always justified the means when everyone enjoyed a good story. And the stories were always believable. It was the kind of stuff that couldn't be made up. There were no Bigfoot stories. But these incredible accounts were worthy of being pitched to Hollywood execs. The setting and character depictions and plot details and climax were all there. All the elements of a good fiction. (Or non-fiction. Creative non-fiction to be fair). <br />
<br />
One time Geoff and I went to see a movie called <i>Big Fish</i>. It was about an older dying man who told incredible stories. And one story was about catching a big fish, if I remember correctly. But what I remember most about the movie was how similar in appearance and demeanor the main character was to Guy. The way he told stories - there was no room for interruption. Let alone a sneeze. Stories that captivated you one moment and made you roll your eyes the next, and left you wondering at last which parts, if any, were embellished. Also the character's jowls, the roundness of his face, and rosy cheeks, and how every part of skin on his face moved: from the muscles beneath his fleshy cheeks to the bulges of his eye balls to the lines on his forehead, his entire face told the story, one detail at a time, each one carried word by word with its own energy. Nothing was dull or irrelevant. This character resonated with Guy so well. It was as if the producers and writers of the film had known Guy personally and based the character on him, it was that uncanny. <br />
<br />
Apart from being a storyteller and lawyer, Geoff's dad was a drill sergeant. He wasn't appointed by the military with such ranking, but rather gave himself that role at home when he was board. <br />
<br />
My father, being a pastor, always said "The truth shall set you free." The first time I told this to Geoff, Geoff told me his father said "Work shall set you free." Since Geoff was the oldest son, and his little brother went to a boarding school far away, and his little sister was a delicate flower, Geoff became the bearer of his father's command. He often had work to do at home.<br />
<br />
One summer it was excavating a driveway. Guy told the entire neighborhood he was putting in a stone driveway. Then when the time was nigh he handed Geoff a chisel and some other tools and told him to get busy. Since Geoff's reward would be a Jeep Cherokee, Geoff obliged. Barbara, feeling sorry, offered lemonade (the spiked kind) to Geoff's friends when they came to offer a helping hand. That driveway got beat up with chisels all summer and pieces of pavement got carried away. I watched my boyfriend become thin as a door-rail, chiseled as his chisel. He amazed me. Guy struck me as a hard father. He ate sandwiches and sat in an Adirondack chair and watched Geoff and his friends and sometimes Barbara burden themselves day in and day out, drenched in sweat clear into mid-September. The only sweat that exited Guy's body was a few drops from his temples where the warmth of the sun struck his face as he sat and drank iced tea while watching the work get done.<br />
<br />
I tried to kidnap Geoff from his driveway job on Sunday mornings so he could come to church with me. This was a constant battle throughout our decade-long courtship. We never had outright fights about attending church but I always knew that Geoff preferred not to go. But this summer he seemed more than willing. Obviously as an excuse to get out of slave labor. We'd go to church, grab a couple beers at a bar, then return to his house and he'd put in a half-ass 2-3 hours of digging. He actually started listening to a Tool song called <i>Dig</i> that summer and he said it helped him to dig faster and harder. I think the beer drinking helped his digging too. And I'm sure church helped. I know when I go to church on Sundays, my whole week just turns out better. <br />
<br />
When the truck delivery came with all the stones in mid-September, you would think only the Grand Pontiff could maneuver these pieces of earth. Yet somehow they were miraculously strewn about in just the right places when all was said and done. And Geoff got his Jeep.<br />
<br />
Exciting improvements were always happening at Guy's household. One winter he put in an outdoor Jacuzzi. Geoff and I frequented it during blizzardy college weekends. Later on he purchased a vacation home in Rhode Island, and we eventually moved there. At some point in between, Guy bought a motel restaurant business where I tended bar and waited tables while Geoff entertained patrons with his singing and guitar playing. Sometimes I brought my keyboard and played songs, too.<br />
<br />
We truly felt like family during those times. Me and Geoff's family that is.<br />
<br />
I don't know that my family ever felt like they got to know Geoff like Geoff's family got to know me. My family never had all that much to offer Geoff in way of entertainment or spoils. And that was pretty obvious to me by way of how often he chose not to visit.<br />
<br />
Guy was also able to be more generous to me than my parents were able to be to Geoff. When I first graduated from college and was doing graduate work at Plattsburgh State, Guy bought some condos up the road from his home, and let me live there rent-free for over a year. I worked my first teaching job, and saved enough money to play Party-Poker and eat expensive cheese like there was no tomorrow. Times were good. Geoff still lived at his house, but slept over at my place a lot, and came over when we had friends visit. He even put the electric bill in his name since my credit score was bad. When I got behind on my electric bill, Geoff's credit score was affected. We had a big fight about it.<br />
<br />
The electric eventually got turned off. I couldn't pay it. Out of the apartment I went. Back home to my parents' house. Found a homeschooling job. Good money. Private pay. Did save money this time. Paid Geoff back. So Geoff and I agreed to move into a house together back in his hometown, just down the road from his parents', not far from where I was living before. Our hopes were high.<br />
<br />
It was a fresh start after a very bumpy year. While I was living at home, I'd become depressed. I abused amphetamines to get through my second and final year of grad school and also found myself drinking shots with patrons while tending bar at a golf club. On two occasions within 6 weeks of each other, I was arrested for DUI. I spent a night in jail each time. I had to strip squat cough, the whole works. The severity of having two offenses should have really destroyed me. I should have served at least 3-6 months in jail and paid thousands of dollars in fines, but Geoff's dad got me out on a technicality.<br />
<br />
Barbara, I should add, even marched into the police station after my second offense and from the temporary cell I was being detained in, I could hear her in her Rhode Island accent hounding the cops who arrested me:<br />
<br />
"You couldn't give her a break? The girl's gettin' her degree and she blows a .08 for Christ's sake! We live right up the road. She said she'd walk home! All this over an out tail light? You gotta be kiddin me! This is ludicrous. A downright shame." <br />
<br />
I'll never figure out how she in her right mind could defend me after I'd blown a 1.5 the month before and driven straight into a telephone pole, taking out an old lady's stone wall and totaling my parent's vehicle at 3 a.m. I'll never figure out how her husband could go to court as a retired, unpaid lawyer to bail out a girl who was clearly not good enough for his son. I was from the other side of the tracks, so to speak. He should have told Geoff to head for the hills. <br />
<br />
When I ended things with Geoff many years later, Guy finally did tell Geoff to head for the hills. He bought him a membership to an online dating website. He told Geoff it was unacceptable for him to remain friends with me, after learning we were pursuing a friendship long after our break-up. Geoff shared this with me during one of our walks down Westwind Road in Wakefield, RI in 2012, one year after we'd split.<br />
<br />
"My dad thinks it's weird we still hang out."<br />
<br />
"Do you think it's weird?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"Well, we are broken up. My dad offered to buy me a membership on Match." Geoff laughed in his typical way.<br />
<br />
"But we still love each other." I reached out and tried to hold Geoff's hand. He resisted.<br />
<br />
"My dad's right. It is weird. This is weird. Going on a walk with you right now is weird. Holding hands is really weird."<br />
<br />
"It's hard for me to think of you dating other people. I can't even imagine dating someone else right now."<br />
<br />
"Well at some point we both have to move on. You're the one that didn't want to get married."<br />
<br />
"You didn't want to get married long before I gave you the ring back."<br />
<br />
"I don't know what you want me to say."<br />
<br />
"Nothing. There's nothing to say."<br />
<br />
A month later I packed up what was left of my life in Rhode Island and moved back to New York to live with my parents. I told Geoff I'd always love him as I collected the last of what I could fit in my car from his parents' vacation house where we'd accumulated so many things. I told him I'd be back within a year to get whatever was left. I blew him a kiss and he just stood there and waved and smiled. I think he was relieved to finally see me go. He needed some closure.<br />
<br />
I spent the remainder of 2012 and all of 2013 with my parents. I visited Geoff once in the spring of 2013 to collect the rest of my personal belongings. We met at the Chophouse Grille, which used to be a place we frequented under the previous name Casey's, just to grab an appetizer and a beer. We had a humorous yet bittersweet conversation, which ended all too soon. As I went out to my car to leave, he helped me load boxes into my trunk and beckoned me to stay a minute more.<br />
<br />
"Isn't there anything else to talk about?" he asked.<br />
<br />
"No, I don't think so." I replied.<br />
<br />
"Oh," he frowned.<br />
<br />
"But if you think of anything you can call me..." I said.<br />
<br />
I drove away. He stood outside his car watching. I cried but it was just a couple tears. He never called. Well, about 8 months later he did. To wish me a Merry Christmas.<br />
<br />
That was the longest 8 months of my life.<br />
<br />
And the following year was the longest 12.<br />
<br />
Presently we have no meaningful communication. It's probably a good thing. There's no way to have a healthy friendship. I re-experience the breaking of my heart just thinking about him. No sense in trying to communicate.<br />
<br />
Speaking solely from my own experience, I'll say that letting go of someone you love is like putting a piece of your heart into a drawer. Shutting the drawer and never opening it again. You know the piece is in there. You'd like to open it, look at the piece, hold it, massage it, maybe even someday put it back in your body. Feel complete again. Even for a moment. Maybe longer. You see the possibility.<br />
<br />
But alas. The drawer is closed. I'm sad again. Sad for even dreaming.<br />
<br />
You're never quite right. Fragmented, sad, broken. Just a few words to describe it. The feeling of knowing you're incomplete. Your shattered pieces exist outside of you. You are simply incapable of putting them back inside, let alone together, the right way, the way they used to be. You can never go back to who you once were. <br />
<br />
You don't just <i>get over</i> someone. You don't just <i>pick yourself up</i> and <i>move on</i>. You and somebody else exchanged parts of yourself with one another. When you split up, you don't get those parts back. They're gone. Forever. Parts of your heart. Your heart even beats differently. It's been shown scientifically that living creatures can and do die from loneliness. Breaking up is beyond hard to do. It's deadly.<br />
<br />
All the memories I've lost, too. Many I've forgotten, just because I have a poor memory, and don't have access to all the pictures Geoff and I took. I've lost our memories. A decade's worth. Which makes writing about our relationship even more difficult. I've lost a friend. A family. The security of feeling unconditionally loved by a person in this world that isn't obligated to love me, but chose to do so. <br />
<br />
As for Guy, I hope if he were able to conjure up some empathy for his son's runaway bride, he'd have sat me down and consoled me like he did Geoff. I never got any pity or counseling from his parents nor mine. I just went on solitary midnight drives to scream my lungs out after the break-up. That was what I resorted to. If I could go back and have a conversation with Guy and Barbara, I'd tell them first Thank You for all they did for me, and apologize for not being a better girlfriend to Geoff or better friend to Geoff's sister. I'd apologize for a few other things, too. I'd also say good-bye. It never really occurred to me that I'd never see them again. And to face that reality without any real closure has been unsettling to say the least.<br />
<br />
I'd also tell Guy I'm sorry for never amounting to anything. My best excuse maybe would be that I just wasn't made for these times. I'd ask him to tell me about the 1960's and help me to imagine a better world, where people did dream and did get jobs and have marriages and families and have decent lives. I would ask him if he ever had to break up with a girlfriend. What was his secret to happiness? He had so much wisdom and I had so much more to learn from him. Wouldn't it be nice to have more answers? Guy always had all the answers. And if he didn't he made them up. I miss talking to Guy. Or rather listening when he spoke.<br />
<br />
I'll close with a more happy and fitting memory of Guy. When I first started dating Geoff, Guy made me try escargot (a snail!) at a fancy restaurant and I firmly objected but he more firmly insisted so I plugged my nose and swallowed one whole! And that's a memory I'll definitely never forget! I'm really glad I tried it. I think he was proud of me for doing it. <br />
<br />Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-63781373956677192192017-11-26T02:44:00.000-08:002017-12-17T08:37:03.392-08:00The Story of Geoff: Ch. 7<u><b>Dating Again</b></u><br />
<br />
I haven't written in almost a year. I tried to tackle a chapter on Geoff's father, but he couldn't be captured. Too big of a man for my mind to grasp. Completely out of reach. I let my mind spin around in the past trying not to forget him... but sometimes you need to step away from the past to remember.<br />
<br />
I started dating again. I didn't want to write. All the words I wrote for a season drained me of all the emotion I'd carried for years, leaving me feeling empty again. A good empty. Like when you haven't eaten for a long time. <br />
<br />
The words, or building blocks of a well-written sentence are like threads of a loom, the various colors being the emotions directing the needle. My fingers were paralyzed, my heart calloused over, and my mind drifting contentedly toward a supervoid, when suddenly I was escorted into a wave of ecstasy. It just came upon me one day. I almost didn't recognize the feeling, a puddle of fear and excitement, pessimism and hope. A longing and a pushing away. My heart was at odds with itself, being that what evoked these feelings was a 19-year-old boy. An emerging man who seemed almost as lost and afraid of life as me. And hunger returned. I craved him like a starving child. <br />
<br />
Jesse worked with me at the health food store. We started out just having tea together when the store was slow. I gave him a ride home when it was too cold to walk, though usually he preferred walking. We became friends quickly.<br />
<br />
Daily he educated me on teas and herbs. Supplements he'd discovered and the illnesses they might cure. His dreams - literal dreams - as he seemed to somewhat loiter in them during his waking hours.<br />
<br />
By the time we spent too much time together, we fell into something that felt like love. It was a crushing fall for me. The age difference made me question my own sense of morality. My friends didn't judge. Though it was still uncomfortable having these feelings.<br />
<br />
I went to a house party to meet some of his friends one day and one of his friends was a boy I'd babysat. My father forbade it. "I don't want you having a relationship with him until he's 25."<br />
<br />
I explored in my mind all the different ages we would be as he grew up to catch up with my <i>adultness</i>, and at just the perfect ages I imagined him, my age did not fit the picture. He would be 30 and I would be 46. He would be 46 and I would be 61. All the best retinols and serums and eye creams wouldn't keep me beautiful enough to match the majestic man I knew he'd turn out to be. He would certainly leave me someday.<br />
<br />
I had to stop thinking about the age difference. It was a conscious choice I made. I gave up that worry. And one night, in full abandonment of the modesty mask I'd worn as a single woman for 5 years, I gave Jesse a hickey.<br />
<br />
It was a playful kiss, void of any passion. The passion may have preceded but it left as soon as I lunged. We'd already exchanged verbal concurrences of our shared feelings, and I felt that his neck was safer than his lips. His lips might melt me. They were unapproachable. Full, soft, passionate lips - the ones all his beautiful words escaped from. A sacred part of his body, maybe, based on how he spoke to me. When I wasn't lost in his gaze during conversation, I mostly stared at his lips. They were perfect.<br />
<br />
I loved talking to him. He preferred tea to alcohol and conversation to activity. He loved the things I did and had a spirituality so profound I wondered if he'd be a famous guru someday, and told him so. I wondered if God could have orchestrated this unlikely and socially frowned upon relationship. A 35-year old woman and a teenage boy? I convinced myself yes. It had to be. The feelings were so strong and held me hostage to believing so.<br />
<br />
If Sheldon Cooper took a liking to health food and nature - he'd be Jesse. Jesse spoke in poetry sometimes. One day over tea he was telling me about his dreams, and how difficult it is to wake up. But when his eyes would open in the morning, he searched for God. A sign that today would be alright. "If God isn't the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning, I need to go back to bed," he said.<br />
<br />
In his waking hours, when taking a pause from the company of his dream friends, he devoted himself to me. He introduced me to mystic music, guided me on night walks through the woods in foot-deep snow, and made me tea. Sometimes he would reach out and hold my hand or hug me for no reason at all. We squeezed when we hugged. I felt so close to him when this happened. These hugs. Like if we held each other long and hard enough, we'd become one person.<br />
<br />
Much to my embarrassment, Jesse's dad commented on the hickey one day, elbowing me when he visited the store, and reminding me how unfortunate it was that Jesse suffered such a serious burn injury on his neck while fixing that muffler.<br />
<br />
"Oh yeah. That was a shame." I answered back in all seriousness.<br />
<br />
Finally one day Jesse and I kissed. I mean really kissed. It was out in his dad's garage where he'd built us a fire in the wood-stove and laid out a deck of cards to teach me a new game. I stood up and faced him to say good-bye for the night when the fire started to die, as I can't stand the cold, and he stood up too, but we had run out of things to say. He put his hands on my hips. Whether he was overly respectful or just scared to touch me anywhere else, I'll never know. The relationship didn't last. But that kiss filled me. I was warm all over. As if I'd never been kissed before, my body got the tingles of a teenage girl. I was young again. I was swimming in the puddle. My first love all over. <br />
<br />
But the age difference was too much. Sixteen years. I was the same age as his mother. Something was wrong with this picture. Even though his parents supported it. I couldn't stifle these pressing concerns, this generational gap that made itself more evident as time went on. It crept up like a Jack-in-the-Box, and one day frightened me so much I began missing my empty feeling again.<br />
<br />
To just go back and rewind and suppress...<br />
<br />
If only he'd not come to volunteer at the store...<br />
<br />
If only he wasn't born... <br />
<br />
If only...<br />
<br />
I kept a letter he wrote me. He handed it to me one morning at the store, after we had our first fight the night before. He probably suspected that some things better left unsaid are even better written down. I have it here with me:<br />
<br />
"I'm happier with you. I love every dimension of you: personality, soft warm body, colorful face, colorless teeth, blue eyes, long brown beautiful naturally curly hair, the way you are, the characteristics of your uniqueness. I think about our smiles when I'm alone. How you balance me and teach me. You're making me better. You encourage, model, and motivate me to make better decisions. I can be myself with you. I can relax. You are so nice, so funny. You cook amazing food. I'm grateful for every hug, every kiss, every touch by you. I appreciate all we have done and all you have done for me. I feel unworthy, that I can't give you adequate repayment at this time. I want to give to you. I want you to be happy. Everyday I want to say, "I love you." You took a huge risk in dating me. I realized it would affect your personal life in negative ways if I were to disappoint you. You look and dress nice every day, clean well, drive well, take good care of your dogs and family and self. I am having difficulty expressing my feelings and concerns and I don't know what is best to say next, so I made this gratitude list that I may more clearly hear the voice of God if I am aligned with love and kindness."<br />
<br />
That letter validated my existence in the moments I tearfully read it. I gave him a hug. We were cutting onions and both began to cry. I forgave him for what I felt was a grave offense against me and wanted even more to make us work, but when we had our next fight, a couple weeks later, it was our last.<br />
<br />
One thing I do hold onto besides that letter is a silver chain. One he said he wore daily in high school. It's shiny and beautiful. Like his eyes. His eyes were deep and troubled as he handed it to me, like he might regret giving me this extension of himself. I put the necklace on remorselessly but took it off after our fateful second argument.<br />
<br />
I kept the chain in my purse, thought of pawning it, sheerly out of financial desperation, but couldn't let it go.<br />
<br />
Life is sad. Sad and hard. It's hard to let go of things. Harder than letting go of people, sometimes. <br />
<br />
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<br />Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-74805014136652991782017-03-02T06:43:00.002-08:002018-02-11T07:31:46.091-08:00The Story of Geoff: Ch. 6<u><b>Barbara</b></u><br />
<br />
Few girlfriends gain such favorable rapport with their boyfriend's mothers as I did with Geoff's mom. Barbara took me in like her own baby duckling. She did things like that in general. It was in her second nature. She fed and housed orphans, adopted children, donated gifts and money and time to charities, and in her day-job, worked with children who had special needs. And she became my specially needed mom for ten years. <br />
<br />
My first impression of her was that she was too short to be Geoff's mom. And that she didn't speak right. There was an accent I couldn't place.<br />
<br />
"Hi, I'm Bah-brah<i>, </i>so nice to finally meet you, Geoff has said such nice things, let me take ya coat."<br />
<br />
Was she from Boston? Long Island?<br />
<br />
"Hi I'm Erin. Nice to meet you too!"<br />
<br />
"So come on in. You can leave ya shoes offo on, doesn't matta ta me. Geoff can show ya around. I'll show ya what's ta eat though."<br />
<br />
She showed us what was leftover from dinner. There were some Mike's Hard Lemonades in the fridge which Geoff pointed at and raised his eyebrows when Barbara opened the door and I grinned at him from behind.<br />
<br />
"Guy's upsteah's workin but he'ahs the clickah for you two if you wanna watch TV in the kitchen or Geoff you can show her both living room TV's but downsteah's TV is bettah since Dad is up and he has a deposition hearing tomorrah." <br />
<br />
Barbara handed us the remote and poured two differently colored Mike's Hard Lemonades into a glass of ice she had sitting on the counter then scuffled around the kitchen island in her velvety slide-on slippers, and up the stairs she went to leave Geoff and I alone, as we slid into the booth-table and turned on the TV. <br />
<br />
"So where's your mother from?"<br />
<br />
"Um, she's from, uh, whatchamacallit, Warwick, Rhode Island, yeah."<br />
<br />
"Oh, I could tell something like that cause of her accent. I was thinking Boston at first."<br />
<br />
"Oh yeah. Yup. She gets that a lot."<br />
<br />
<i> </i>"So what she was drinking looked tasteh." I poked my finger into Geoff's ribs to tickle him.<br />
<br />
"Oh! Yes. So 'mazin. Indeed." Geoff slid out of the booth and went to the cupboards for glasses, then filled them with ice from the inside of the freezer as to not make noise with the ice machine. He brought the glasses and three hard lemonades to the table. I poured.<br />
<br />
"Does your mom still have family in Rhode Island?"<br />
<br />
"Yep, she goes there quite often. Her sister Jeannie and brother-in-law Bob, and her mother all live together in Matunuck Beach, and she has a sister named Rita who lives not far from there. She goes down several times a year." Geoff let out a laugh. "She's always begging the rest of us to go with her but nobody ever wants to."<br />
<br />
"I want to! A beach? Why don't you want to go?"<br />
<br />
"Well, it's a beach but mostly it's a bunch of older people sitting inside a house and smelling the salty beach air and listening to the sound of the beach waves." Geoff let out another laugh.<br />
<br />
"Well we should go and WALK on the beach and go SWIMMING in the beach!"<br />
<br />
"Yeah I will mention it to my mom. She would love that. My dad would love it too, so he doesn't get dragged down or made to feel guilty for not going." We both laughed.<br />
<br />
_________________________________<br />
<br />
<br />
Barbara came to me in the guest room of her home as I prepared for my job interview. I'd only been out of college for two months. I held my English Teacher Certification shakily in one hand, seated on one of the twin beds, whilst penning at my resume on a clipboard with the other. Soon I would print out a final copy of my cover letter and resume, and turn in everything altogether the following morning when interviewing for my first teaching job.<br />
<br />
The job was for teaching tenth grade English, at Saranac Lake High School. Barbara wrote me a blushing letter of recommendation two weeks before. I had another letter from my student teacher advisor, and another from a writing professor at St. Lawrence. All my ducks were in a row. All that was missing was an outfit. And somehow Barbara knew.<br />
<br />
She came to me and asked me if I had anything to wear. I worried that she was going to take me on some kind of mother-daughter shopping spree, and I'd have to politely-awkwardly decline, since she'd already done too much for me all these years, and this was really my own mother's job, but one my own family could not afford, nor would afford me, even if they could.<br />
<br />
"Erin I have something, an old outfit, you probably wouldn't even care to wear it, it's so dated, but you might want to try it on, just in case you like it. It might fit you. I outgrew it a long time ago-"<br />
<br />
"-I'd love to," I interrupted.<br />
<br />
"You can just give it a try, and it might be over the top, or not right for the occasion, or it might not even fit, but-"<br />
<br />
"No, no, let me try it, I just need something, anything to wear-"<br />
<br />
"Okay, let me go check my closet, I think I know where it is, just gotta pull it out, I know it's clean-"<br />
<br />
"Yes, thank you so much."<br />
<br />
Barbara came back within a minute with a beautiful vintage jacket and skirt suit in hand, covered in fitted plastic, which Barbara laid on the twin bed opposite me. She promptly removed the plastic from the hanger and then the hanger from the jacket, and detached the skirt as well. The jacket had a nipped-in waistline and seven buttons, and a delicate collar that folded naturally down. Nothing was masculine or bold, yet the jacket said, "I am assertive, I have fashion, I demand respect." This outfit was a winner, and I felt it would win over my interviewers the following morning.<br />
<br />
I gave Barbara a hug, and asked her for privacy so I could try it on right away. She hesitated, as to show me where a clasp was hidden above the zipper on the skirt, and then left the room. I stripped down to my undies and put the thing on. There was no mirror in the guest room so I flew out of there and into the adjacent bathroom to get an almost-full-length glimpse, and caught a lovely torso-up view. Then I flew up the stairs to Geoff's sister's room to see the whole thing. Without shoes and with my muscular bulging calves it seemed slightly awkward, since the pencil skirt cut at my knees, but I knew with the right shoe this outfit was a hole-in-one, and so was I.<br />
<br />
I flew down the stairs to the guest room and Barbara was waiting in the hallway and she smiled. She read my face. I put my hands on my hips and did a half turn in each direction.<br />
<br />
"So you like it?"<br />
<br />
"I love it."<br />
<br />
____________________________________<br />
<br />
<br />
I never did get that teaching job, so Geoff's parents bought a home in RI and helped us move there and start a new lease on life. It was meant to be a hopeful new future. A fresh start.<br />
___________________________________<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>There's just one thing I'll hold to forever, there's just one little glint in your eye...</i><br />
<br />
Barbara's eyes bent downward and sparkled, a melody her gaze cast upon the dinner table sang volumes louder than the momentary laughter that followed. Geoff's eyes matched hers, their smiles a mirrored image from a generation past. I imagined over dinners shared at the Hayward household, Barbara nursing Geoff from birth, her firstborn son, watching him grow, her good one, searching his eyes as a baby, before he could speak, how he'd speak with his eyes, and smile with them, as she smiled back. That mother-baby talk. How maybe I'd have a baby like Geoff, those glinty smiling eyes to look back at me someday.<br />
<br />
Barbara passed the long string beans around the table once more, almost begging someone to finish them. I obliged. She knew I was a healthy eater, loving my veggies. Geoff and his father took seconds on mashed potatoes and gravy. Scraps of meat fat and even some good cuts I noticed Guy sneak off the serving platter to the dogs as they begged at the dinner table, come end of meal... <br />
<br />
...The last time I saw Barbara was at her workplace in 2013. I took some time off to spend with my family that year, and worked part time as a substitute teacher. One day I got called to substitute for Barbara. She met me in her classroom before leaving for an in-house meeting. It was nearly two years since I'd seen or spoken to her, and I wanted to throw myself into her arms and unleash a well of tears into her goosy neckpit and explain everything I'd felt and held inside all this time. But that's not how our encounter went. <br />
<br />
How do you explain? Explain to the mother of her dear boy she raised from birth, that he disappointed you by making you wait a decade for an engagement ring? That he complained about the wedding details as I planned our special day, alone? That he didn't seem to want to marry me at all, after he asked?<br />
<br />
But I couldn't explain, because I knew, all too well, that I hardly deserved him in the first place. I'd never fully remained faithful to Geoff. There was a flirtiness in me that had gotten me into trouble on at least two occasions. And Geoff knew. I'd confessed. Partially just to hurt him. I was mean to him. Impatient. Ungrateful. Spoiled.<br />
<br />
I couldn't complain to Barbara. She had raised a good son. There was no venting to her. I'd already done enough damage by leaving.<br />
<br />
There really was nothing to say. Just sadness and pain stood between us like an invisible third party stranger. Barbara handed over her sub plans to me like she would to any other substitute teacher. All businesslike. She was decent and pleasant but not overly so. <br />
<br />
She handed over the plans. That was the last I saw of Barbara. A stack of papers handed from her hands to mine. A forced smile and a shadow in her eyes where a glint used to be. I knew this would be one of her last years of teaching and perhaps the last time I saw her. <br />
<br />
She would retire two years later and have some time to finally embrace her life. Enjoy her family and children and the grandchildren she already had, and future grandchildren Geoff might bring her with his new present girlfriend, since I was unable to bring her the ones she'd probably imagined having by now, as I write about her from my empty bedroom at home.<br />
<br />
If she reads this someday I hope she knows how special she is to me and that I love her as deeply as anyone can love a second mother. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-50360024745448345382017-02-25T07:11:00.002-08:002017-02-26T23:31:18.490-08:00The Story of Geoff: Ch. 5 <u><b>Paraphernalia </b></u><br />
<br />
Definition 1: miscellaneous articles, especially the equipment needed for a particular activity.<br />
<br />
Definition 2: all the objects needed for or <i>connected with</i> a particular activity.<br />
<br />
I'm using definition 2 here, taken from the Cambridge English Dictionary, and blending it with definition 1, source unknown (popped up first on a box on Google) to discuss miscellaneous articles connected with particular activities Geoff and I did together.<br />
<br />
I came across these articles by accident just this morning, while searching for my box dvd set of Seinfeld. A friend was asking me to take him a blanket and pillow to his work so he could take a nap, and it reminded me of season 8 where George takes a nap under his desk. I felt inclined to show the episode to my friend, a younger man of just 20 years, who'd never seen Seinfeld. In my search for the dvd's I accidentally opened an old storage bin with some paraphernalia in it.<br />
<br />
I began fingering through some manila envelopes that looked like they may have old tax information inside, but were labeled "Music," "Cards," "Grandma Dukett," "Stickers and Pins," "Misc. SLU," "SLU Poems & Assignments" (with a paper inside entitled <i>On the Limited Selection of Guys at St. Lawrence</i> which discusses the lame toss up between jocks, Beta boys, Phi Sigs, and nerds), "Travel Memorabilia," Paystubs," and "Photofilm."<br />
<br />
I didn't go through all of them meticulously, but some I did. It was emotional but I didn't cry. I found pieces of things I didn't recall writing or receiving. Especially the cards. There were concert ticket stubs and newspaper cutouts and pictures and receipts, all kinds of memorabilia. Special remembrances saved I suppose for today, February 25, 2017.<br />
<br />
Since this is the story of Geoff I'll mention a few things that reminded me of him. A Valentine's Day Card with a Tetris theme to start. The cover looks like the game screen, and when you open it, it still makes the sound of a Tetris piece falling. My heart started to beat in rhythm with it when I opened and read: Hope your Birthday (crossed out to read "Valentine's Day") is one good thing on top of another! And written below, "I love you Erin! (Even if you sometimes beat me at Tetris.)"<br />
<br />
NOTE TO READER: I always beat Geoff at Tetris.<br />
<br />
"Love, Geoff."<br />
<br />
Geoff probably gave this to me on our first or second Valentine's Day. 2001 or 2002. We had exchanged the words <i>I love you,</i> quickly. It was located in the manila envelope with my oldest things - not with the other cards. It was mixed in with newspaper clippings from my freshman and sophomore years of college. So this card is old. It is special.<br />
<br />
In the manila envelope labeled "Cards," I found a card from 2011. It is from my parents. Mostly from my mom. Inside the card reads, "Feel free to flaunt your love! Congratulations." My mother's chicken-scratch handwriting covers the rest of the card with messages of frantic hope. "Looking forward to the Big Day with MUCHO anticipation! Love, Hugs, and Prayers!" There is a picture of a diamond ring on the front of the card, quite like the one I was wearing. My mother has drawn smiley faces all over. Exclamation points abound. It's too much excitement, even now. I have to close it and put it away, all over again.<br />
<br />
A birthday card. The last birthday I spent as Geoff's muffin. I turned 29, not realizing my thirties would be so impossible. The card actually just has a great big number 9 on it. Geoff has written in red marker above the 9, "So, you're turning 2 (9) ... That's cool ...<br />
<br />
I open the card. It reads, "Today's your day to shine! Happy Birthday!!"<br />
<br />
He writes below: "Tineh! I love you so much! You are my older woman, and I am proud to be your trophy muffin. Love, geoff."<br />
<br />
NOTE TO READER: I am only 4 months older than Geoff.<br />
<br />
He has drawn red and blue balloons and a muffin cupcake hybrid on the left blank inner page of the card. He is a good sketch artist and it's worth framing, but I'm closing the card now, as my eyes begin to water.<br />
<br />
I take a glance at the back of the card - it was only $2.75. My eyes dry up. He definitely went somewhere cheap for that card.<br />
<br />
I've discovered in "Stickers and Pins," a Mountain Music Meltdown press pass from Geoff's days working as a reporter for the <i>Enterprise</i> in Saranac Lake. The Gibson Brothers are listed as headliners, as well as Ana Popovic and Tcheka and Doc Watson and New Riders of the Purple Sage.<br />
<br />
I've found a National Grid bill for $523.44 dated 9-25-06 while we lived in the birdhouse, though some of that bill was carried over from my previous apartment on Cliff Ave, where Geoff's dad let me live free of charge as he owned the property. There is a note penned in on the bill, Geoff's handwriting, that says "Pd 75- 10/4/06" as Geoff was probably chipping away at my debt while he worked at the paper. I was a grad student and trying to substitute teach. These were tough times before we got out of Saranac Lake and moved to Rhode Island, though we couldn't make it work there either. Money. The root of all evil. Bills. Oil. This oil bill. I remember crying to the oil delivery man one night when I had just made a $600 sub paycheck and had to spend the entire thing on a midnight delivery. We'd run out of oil in a matter of days during a really frigid cold spell in winter. Geoff kept saying we couldn't keep the heat up past 68 and I hated wearing blankets on my head around the house but had to thereafter.<br />
<br />
I've found an Ernie Ball Custom Gauge 9 Electric/Acoustic Guitar String - probably the top E string, since it's so thin.<br />
<br />
A receipt from Cove Electronics Repair Store in Newport, RI for $25.00. Bad Input, Replaced Jack. Date 10/30/07.<br />
<br />
A receipt from Smokey Bones Restaurant in Warwick, RI for $23.89. No items listed. Signed by me. Date 4/12/08.<br />
<br />
A receipt from The Incredible Pulp Comic Book Store in Narragansett, RI for $14.96. No items listed. Date 8.8.09.<br />
<br />
I also found a stack of envelopes along with fourteen one-cent stamps, three two-cent stamps, and one twenty-eight cent stamp and felt like I hit the jackpot.<br />
<br />
All in a morning's work, and chapter five is done, and I feel like a healing is in order.<br />
<br />
It's okay to cry and to feel things.<br />
<br />
It's okay to need medication and rest and pity parties.<br />
<br />
It's okay to lash out at your friends and family sometimes. They'll understand and they'll forgive you when you apologize.<br />
<br />
Write, talk, embrace new friendships. Share your pain with others. You'd be surprised at how willing even strangers are to listen.<br />
<br />
It's okay.<br />
<br />
It's okay even when it's been six years since your break up with the boy-man who maybe never wanted to marry you in the first place.<br />
<br />
It's okay if he moved on easily and you still can't.<br />
<br />
It's okay if letting go seems impossible. For most normal, caring people, letting go of someone you love isn't normal at all. It's the most abnormal, unnatural, tear-out-your-own-intestines feeling in the world. Like cuttings without the euphoric release. It feels like self mutilations, suicide, and death, only without the luxury of dying. And you live through the process all over again every day you work at letting go. Letting go <i>is</i> hard. So whatever amount of time it takes to do that, it's okay.<br />
<br />
Even when you're the only person telling yourself the words, <i>it's okay</i>, it's okay. Because most days, yours will be that only voice saying those two words you so desperately need to hear. If you listen even closer, you might hear the Lord say them too.<br />
<br />
Whatever the process looks like, that's okay too. Just let it out, keep it in, everyday is different. At least that's what I'm learning. Expression comes in all different forms. Healing does too.<br />
<br />
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<br />Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-79300255760898312102017-02-15T09:30:00.002-08:002017-03-06T12:09:31.408-08:00The Story of Geoff: Ch. 4 Chapter 4: Music<br />
<br />
<u><b>Songs</b></u><br />
<br />
I started a singing group in third grade. Ellee
Loffler and Erica Beggs and Mary Hornig were in it. I named it <i>The Bad
Girls</i>, and wrote our first title track, appropriately named after the
band. The refrain repeated, "We're the bad bad bad-bad girls, We're the
bad bad bad-bad girls." I added verses composed of clever rhyming
depictions of ways in which we would torture unsuspecting other girls if
they didn't watch out for us.<br />
<br />
This was presumably the
development of some alter-ego I formed shortly after I realized I was
not going to be popular. I was smart enough to
understand what being left out and bullied felt like, and it seemed a harmless enough
outlet for expressing my feelings. Ellee and Erica and Mary were good
sports. I choreographed dance moves I'd learned from after-school fame
dance lessons my mother took me to and wrote maybe two other songs,
three in all, and talked one of the older school aids on the playground
into letting the four of us girls use the auditorium stage for practice
on rainy recess days. Our group lasted all of three weeks, if that, then fizzled out, like most bands and great ideas later in my life did. But it served its purpose for the time being. I had a creative outlet for my momentary childhood rage. <br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>Piano</b></u><br />
<br />
My mother put me in piano lessons at the age of 5, probably to stop me from banging out heart and soul already on the household Wyman. But after coming home in tears week after week, entirely disenchanted with how the ivories and ebony had been reduced to nonsensical two finger exercises called "ping pong" and the like, mother pulled me out. Thank God. Back to heart and soul, and on to the feather song from <i>Forrest Gump</i> and the love song from <i>Titanic</i> and other melodies I could hear and emulate. What a mystery, to play by ear, and the satisfaction thereafter of matching up the notes just right. It brought me such joy. Much more joy than ping pong. What a joke that was. What was mother thinking. Or that piano teacher. I felt sorry for her other students.<br />
<br />
But later on I came to envy my cousins and friends in school who could open up more advanced piano books in school and play beautiful scores, and songs I could not play by ear. They baffled me, these rhythms and riffs. I hit a wall at an age of 10 or 12 and stopped playing piano altogether. I joined the middle school band and played flute instead.<br />
<br />
Come high school I couldn't play flute very well either. I never did learn to hit the high C. My cheeks were too fat to tighten them and blow any solid note really. And when I tried, I felt goofy and smiled, and ruined the seriousness which was necessary to blow. I fudged recitals, All State competitions, and even band practices. Maybe that's why my band teacher who became superintendent fired me so easily years later when I took pictures of fifth graders' art projects and posted them on FaceBook. He remembered that I couldn't blow my flute notes and didn't take band as seriously as he most certainly did. He never so much as smiled, as even practice was war to him. He sweat globs of perspiration down his sideburns while conducting full band rehearsals with his tiny baton. He would be soaking wet from head to toe by the end of performances, bowing a long time after each ensemble as if he'd written and performed it himself. <br />
<br />
I did try to learn piano chords from my mother so I could play in church during my teen years. On a handful of Sunday mornings, when services were short an entire worship team, I offered to lead, and had to learn to play instantly, and my mom came to the rescue. I would choose a few songs with three chords and learn how to play them that very morning. I knew the words already and by the grace of God managed.<br />
<br />
In eleventh grade I joined a high school rock band. There were three guys who played guitar, bass, and drums. They wanted a female keyboardist who sang. That was me. I did a Sheryl Crow and Janis Joplin song and a few others. Natalie Imbrulgia. Some harmonies with the guys. I can't remember everything. But it gave me my first real experience playing in a band. I went on to play with a few more bands in Rhode Island but won't delve into that here, other than to say it happened and isn't worth mentioning. One was a loser basement band with a few old men who wanted a lead singer who could shake it. That went terribly wrong at our first paid gig and I quit. For starters I have nothing to shake. The next was a lesbian rock band and I did not get along with the angry lesbian lead singer and didn't like rocking my keys to her lesbo lover rocker rage lyrics. The end.<br />
<br />
I also tried a duo with my friend Fred, who I devote a later chapter to. He's the best piano player I've met, and also my best friend. Fred. I really should write a book about him.<br />
<br />
In the Bloomingdale Ave house where Geoff and I and the bird resided after I graduated college, I really learned to play keys. I bought my first real keyboard, which I still have today. A Yamaha Portable Grand, 76 keys, light as really heavy feather, and purchased a sustain pedal and stand and padded foldable bench to go along, and let it sit in my bedroom for about two months before attacking the damn thing.<br />
<br />
Yes, Geoff and I had separate bedrooms in the Bloomingdale Ave house too. Maybe we weren't meant to be after all. I'm beginning to wonder that as I write this book. Maybe these chapters are meant more of a farewell than as a fetching fare for him. I digress.<br />
<br />
The first song I decided to learn to play, of all songs, was a ridiculously difficult one, by Journey, called <i>Don't Stop Believing</i>. I looked up the riff on YouTube and got busy. About a month later I had the right hand down. Then came the left bass riff. That took all of one day. Then was putting both hands together.<br />
<br />
I cried like there was no tomorrow. My brain just became mush when combining these left and right hand parts. It wasn't going to happen.<br />
<br />
But then one day, maybe a week later, out of the blue, it happened.<br />
<br />
But then I had to sing the words along with it.<br />
<br />
Oy Vey. Another two weeks. And then I had the whole thing memorized. Left and right hands together and words. I was afraid to stand up from my keyboard after the first time playing it through flawlessly, like I might unglue my brain from it's knowledge by lifting my hands and going to sleep that night. But the neurons and synapses had fixated themselves, had solidified something in the neurotransmitter nonsense in my mind that still exists today somewhere up there in the electricity upstairs, so that whenever I sit down to play, even after a year or more of playing that song, I can place my hands and bust out that tune. I know I can. It's a song I'll take to the grave, watch me. <br />
<br />
Everything else came somewhat easy after learning <i>Don't Stop</i>. So I didn't. I looked up chords on the internet, blues progressions mostly for songs not involving complex riffs, and simply placed my fingers in position and remembered. I bought a mini spiral notecard flipbook I still have today with all my song notes on it for about 50 cover songs. Carol King, White Stripes, Carly Simon, Ben E King, Elvis, John Prine, Regina Spektor, Sheryl Crow, Sarah McLachlan, Van Morrison, Indigo Girls, Beatles, Counting Crows, Coldplay, Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson, Grace Potter, and John Lennon. There were even more. Dolly Parton's Jolene though White Stripes did a version, too. And there was House of the Rising Sun by The Animals. And Breaking Up Is Hard To Do by Neil Sedaka, which I learned for a Josh Hartnett film I was once cast in as a bar room singer, but then a promoter pulled out of the film last minute and the movie was never made.<br />
<br />
I would have learned more songs - Elton John and Joni Mitchell and Fiona Apple and Tori Amos and Stevie Wonder and Natalie Merchant and Christine McVie were just a few personal idols and bar room requests I'd get from time to time. But alas I couldn't please everyone, lest myself, mostly because I was pursuing work and pleasing Geoff and often times playing in a band where somebody else chose the tunes. Learning a song well enough to perform took me a good week or two, and getting down 50 tunes was a feat in and of itself, and I kind of sat on that flip book for a while and retired. Today though I feel like going back and learning a few more. <br />
<br />
I also spent a few years writing songs. I wrote my first piano song, Bottle of Tears, on my Yamaha, at the birdhouse on Bloomingdale Ave. I went on to record a full length piano song album with a record studio in Rhode Island shortly after moving there, having written most of my remaining songs for the album at the cottage on Matunuck Beach. They were mostly sad songs, but Geoff helped me record demo's and get them up on Myspace Music, and a music producer in the state found me online, saw potential, and reached out. The rest was history. He and I spent the past eight years working on the album, which is in mastering this winter. The songs are beautiful, and he is the only man in my life besides my dad who has never given up on me. Rob. He's believed in me more than any other person ever has. <br />
<br />
Rob introduced me to other artists he worked with, including a world renowned folk singer named Virginia Dare, who tells me to this day her greatest compliments come from her song <i>Mother Mary,</i> on which I sang harmony with her for the album <i>Divine Mother</i>.<br />
<br />
I'd taken a fairy out to Block Island one day with Rob and just scrapped the sheet music handed to me since I couldn't read it anyways, and made up my own vocal harmony line, often discarding the actual lyrics for oohs and aahs, and Virginia loved it, and so did Rob, and six hours later we called it a rap. I was even paid several hundred dollars for my effortless attempts at coloring this song of hers with my voice.<br />
<br />
On the fairy ride back to Point Judith, Rob told me I was special. He gave me a high five and said, "Good job Erin. You really are something."<br />
<br />
He also said, "You know what else, Erin? You're going to make it someday. And this whole thing with Geoff. Don't worry about it. You're going to make some guy feel really special. And that guy will be really lucky to end up with you."<br />
<br />
Rob always had a way of making me feel like I mattered. I really did feel special that day. Rob's one of my most special friends, maybe even as special as Fred.<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>Guitar</b></u><br />
<br />
My late grandfather bought me an acoustic Roy Clark Signature guitar for $100 and gave it to me when I graduated high school. I took it to college and wrote two songs on it right away. They were called Distractions and Hey, Hey. They were inspired by a break-up with a high school sweetheart I'd dated for only two months, but shared some firsts with. I won't share his name here, because I feel his family would be sensitive to that if reading, but he was a special first boyfriend. And I was depressed leaving him behind. He'd applied to St. Lawrence and didn't get in. But I did. It was the most bitter bittersweet thing I'd gone through, that break up. But the two most beautiful songs came out of it.<br />
<br />
I played those songs all year, and even competed in an open mic with the song Distractions, beating out a local artist at the time who often played in the Brewer Bookstore, named Grace Potter. But I gave up guitar after writing those two songs. I got depressed, put my depression into writing poetry and throwing up my food and starving myself, but then met Geoff a year later, and took to letting him play guitar for me. Music as I knew it, my love for it at least, went on the back burner for about 5 years after that. Those two songs though, sit in my mind as if I wrote them yesterday. Like little children that never grew up. I like it that way. They stayed just the way I liked them.<br />
<br />
Maybe someday I'll write more songs on guitar.<br />
<br />
I did come to inadvertently acquire another guitar. Geoff and I competed in an open mic competition in Matunuck Beach. At the oldest Irish Pub at the end of nowhere. Where Geoff and I drank Guinness and left the day behind.<br />
<br />
For nine weeks finalists were narrowed down from twenty some-odd musicians to somehow, just Geoff and I. A strangely competitive match-up, but I thought a fair one. We were the best. Some slightly competitive talent had chosen poor songs for this older Irish whiskey-drinking crowd. Other performers had poor stage presence and audience interaction. Surely the judges were using some sort of rubric.<br />
<br />
Geoff and I played songs we'd played before, at non-competitive open mics, that we knew would be crowd pleasers here. I saved <i>Don't Stop</i> for this epic finale performance, and won. Geoff felt slighted by that, I could sense, but I was too happy to care. I'd played it with all my heart, and a drunk man told me my foot was going wild. I took that as a compliment since I'd marveled at other keyboardists whose playing would get so wild their non-pedal-using-foot would start dancing around like a puppet on strings. And mine had. What a cool night I'd had. <br />
<br />
Geoff mostly played it. Really I barely touched the thing. But when we split 3 years later, he sadly gave it back to me.<br />
<br />Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-10843581980573739532017-02-12T00:01:00.002-08:002017-02-13T03:58:22.660-08:00The Story of Geoff: Ch. 3 <b> </b>Chapter 3: What Went Wrong?<br />
<br />
<br />
I was a wonderful child, according to my parents, who beam from ear to ear when reminiscing of my earliest years.<br />
<br />
My mother says I never argued back with her, and she found that odd but pleasant. <br />
<br />
I recall my dad spanking me once when I was eight, and I had a belt on that was hard to untie, and I had to help him untie it.<br />
<br />
"Hold on Dad, let me get it. I did this knot thing since it's too big for me. Just a sec - almost ready. Okay you can spank me now."<br />
<br />
And my dad gave me the weakest spanking ever that night.<br />
<br />
My sister's spanking must have been harder because I remember her screaming bloody murder as I started walking up the stairs without so much as a tear in my eye. <br />
<br />
My parents really marveled in me as a child. They didn't know I was being picked on at school or molested by a babysitter next door. Things that happen to lots of little girls, I suppose. And that by the age of 11 I'd become rebellious and sneak out to middle school dances since I wasn't allowed to go, and a few years after that I'd start throwing up my food, and shortly after that, I'd start smoking cigarettes and experimenting with drugs and alcohol.<br />
<br />
Such is the epidemic of modern society's treatment of little girls. We let society molest them, even when they don't get raped.<br />
<br />
They are stripped of their innocence. They are robbed of their simply put words and thoughts and views of the world, simply by having to grow up in it.<br />
<br />
Today I sit around and my eyes water like a leaky faucet. What went wrong? I ask myself. Everything, God whispers back. It's like the earthquake in my life that pulled everything apart, so I need to rebuild from scratch. But I don't know where to begin, and I'm still picking up all the pieces, and it's so exhausting. The pieces of my brokenness. I don't know where this part goes. Or that. Much of it is reduced to ash. Nothingness. Irredeemable burnt up dust. I must start new. A new me. All over again.<br />
<br />
My lawyer calls and says it will take five years before I can see a judge about my case concerning work. So I have another eternity to wait in potential sadness and misery. Only the prison bars are not some steel bars I can wrap my hands around. They're inwardly projected. I'm a prisoner in my mind. It races. This black hole of sad thoughts. Anxious thoughts. Regrets. What ifs. Where is he. Will he come back. Will anyone want me. Will God just take me. What will come of this.<br />
<br />
A prisoner in my body. Where panic works its way around like ants, busy building homes and procreating new thoughts to worry about. Panic breeds panic. I have no medication for this, because it would interfere with my seizure medication. I don't drink caffeine. I don't drink alcohol. I sit with my panic and I write as to distract myself. When I stop, the panic returns. I turn on the TV, I cook, I vacuum, I play with the puppies, and then the panic returns. I take my Trazodone at night and go to sleep, only to wake at 3 a.m. and panic some more, and write, and take two more pills and then go back to sleep until morning, and have another day of panic. Panic and sadness and misery and tears.<br />
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<br />Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-36281556308628052822017-02-10T18:29:00.000-08:002017-12-11T08:54:03.966-08:00The Story of Geoff: Ch. 2 Chapter 2: Letting Go<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><u>Stuffed Animals</u></b><br />
<br />
<br />
Like in most romantic relationships, lots of gifts accumulate. My first gift from Geoff was a stuffed turtle, tucked atop a pile of prizes in a bowling alley arcade drop claw game where Geoff worked. He spent an endless supply of free tokens trying to win it for me one day when I pointed out how cute it was, but he was unsuccessful. <br />
<br />
A few months later, Valentine's Day rolled around, and sure enough, that turtle was in a gift bag for me. I kept it all these years.<br />
<br />
I never found out for sure if he won it legitimately or simply unlocked the machine and pulled it out by hand later on. But I loved that turtle, although it's been abused somewhat by my parents' two new adopted puppies.<br />
<br />
They're actually not puppies anymore. They are going on two. Elmer and Dutchess, a boy and a girl. Miniature Schnauzers, though Dutchess looks more like a Schnoodle, and she's white as a cloud. Elmer is black and grey, and feels like a really densely stuffed stuffed animal. He's built like a mini linebacker dog. Very heavy for a little thing. I call him a chunk. He's fun to pick up and squeeze, since he goes so limp in my arms when I do. He doesn't know how to fetch or play with our other two dogs, and I've taken a keen liking to him, probably because I identify with his antisocial skills.<br />
<br />
One of the cutest things about Elmer is this: When Dutchess wrestles with Brody, our older 5 year old Schnauzer, Elmer will grab a sock or slipper or boot - anything around him - and shake it all about - as if he is vicariously playing with the other two. But he will not physically interact with them. Or me. He prefers to play alone.<br />
<br />
They've gone after all my stuffed animals, Dutchess and Elmer, about seven stuffed animals in all, most of which are from Geoff.<br />
<br />
There are two grey elephants holding pink hearts in their trunks, presumably gifts from past Valentine's Days, a soft pink Valentine's bear and a few other teddies from Geoff. They line the smaller spare daybed in the bedroom where I live now, in my parent's home in Upstate NY, and whenever I invite the puppies upstairs to visit me, they go right for the stuffed animals.<br />
<br />
So far one teddy has lost his nose and each elephant has lost an eye. A few weeks ago, I found the turtle's tail sticking straight up out of a snow bank in the back yard. I don't even know how they got it outdoors. But I do see them take stuffed animals down the stairs when I leave my staircase door open. They're sneaky about it. Elmer, especially. He wants to get the animals outside and buried in the ground. Last spring, I had to wash two of my beanie babies he buried. They were collectables, and he'd even ripped the tags off. I know better now. I keep my beanie babies in a storage bin.<br />
<br />
But the stuffed animals I've learned to let go of. Since I've let go of Geoff, I've let go of them. The things that Geoff has given me. A blue shirt his sister bought me that I loved, I lent to a friend and she never returned it. I was angry for a time, but I let that go. And there were other articles of clothing that his parents bought me that I simply outgrew, and eventually I donated or consigned those items after we split. I couldn't hang on to them any longer. They were just memories of the past, hanging in my closet, never to be worn again.<br />
<br />
The jewelry he bought me over the years, it was all gone too. After letting go of the diamond, what else really mattered? So the stuffed animals were kind of the last thing to go. But I was holding onto them still. But the puppies helped me with that. I loved these dogs. They made me smile everyday. They were giving me unconditional love. I looked at these chewed up, maimed, half blind, deaf, and nose-less stuffed animals. <br />
<br />
I realized moving forward, my dogs could have them, for at this point in time, they loved them more than I.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>Bethany</b></u><br />
<br />
<br />
Letting go of Geoff helped me rekindle a relationship with my own sister, one I'd put on the back burner for far too long.<br />
<br />
Bethany is eighteen months younger than me, so growing up I naturally picked on her, and by the time we would have been old enough to be friends, I'd met Geoff and blocked Bethany out of my life for good.<br />
<br />
After leaving Geoff, Bethany graciously took me back into her life, not that I was ever a part of it to begin with. I didn't even know her really to be honest. She was a complete stranger to me. All I knew of this person my parents had birthed twenty some-odd years ago was that she'd purchased a house somewhere far off in the woods and that it took over an hour to drive there from my parent's home, which was already way out in the boonies.<br />
<br />
One day I decided to pay her a visit and introduce my new, broken self.<br />
<br />
When I arrived at her home, she introduced me to her dog and encouraged me to sit down and make myself comfortable. This was not the little sister I remembered growing up with. The one who seemed to whine and cry and get her way all the time. This person seemed mature and responsible, even moreso than me.<br />
<br />
Her house stood atop a hill that overlooked waterfalls. White bunnies lived across the street in a wild patch of land, she told me. She would throw carrots into an overgrown field sometimes, feeling responsible for their lives in some small way. Her pit bull mix of some sort was friends with the bunnies. They even sometimes played together.<br />
<br />
Her dog's name was Zoey and Bethany was frustrated that Zoey wasn't acting more like a protective watch dog. She should be baring her teeth, letting saliva gather grossly around her jowls, and growling at creepy bearded mountain men who passed by.<br />
<br />
Zoey was too kind, she feared. She might not even realize she was a canine. She was left alone tied up in the woods somewhere for a lengthy period of her puppyhood before a stranger found her and brought her into a shelter. Bethany assumed a pit bull would be as effective as a home security system, and cheaper to boot, so she adopted her. And now it was too late to bring her back.<br />
<br />
Bethany explained her theory that Zoey was exposed to, and possibly raised by, deer and squirrels during her abandonment in the woods as a puppy. She pointed out how Zoey walked high on her toes as if they were hooves. When she pranced about the hardwood floors she sounded like a woman in high heels scrambling around before work. The click-clacks resonated throughout the house.<br />
<br />
The following morning I witnessed Bethany's frustration with Zoey's click-clacks.<br />
<br />
"Either go lay down or go bark at somebody! Be a dog! Stop walking around! What are you doing with your life!?"<br />
<br />
Bethany also complained that when Zoey slept, she would stretch out her limbs and cross each set of ankles, looking very graceful, like a deer.<br />
<br />
"When she's on her runner, Zoey frolics. She literally frolics and leaps in the air. Over things. Things that don't even exist. She should be darting around, chasing after things! And the squirrels? And birds? They come right up on the grass next to her and eat their nuts and things! She thinks she's Bambi. And then the bunnies hop on over and poop in my yard since I'm feeding them carrots and then Zoey eats their poop! It's ridiculous! What am I? Mary Poopins?"<br />
<br />
Bethany and I laughed. I caught her up on the past ten years of my
dying relationship with Geoff. She passed me Kleenex and made me tea and
added wood to the fire. I felt more cared for during my stay with this stranger who was my sister than in the last combined three years I'd lived with Geoff, I realized.<br />
<br />
Bethany eventually changed the subject and walked out to her porch to get more firewood. I heard her yell at the dog. <br />
<br />
<br />
"Stop eating shit you little bitch!"<br />
<br />
<br />
Living alone, I realized Bethany was at least taking out her aggression safely. And Zoey was a happy dog. She really was.<br />
<br />
Bethany let me indulge in the solitude of her warm, tidy home while I was her depressed couch-ridden guest. I felt like I was in a late 19th century cure cottage. Bethany's town population during winter was all of 300, since its economy mostly relied on summer tourism, mostly campers that came to see the waterfalls.<br />
<br />
The only sounds I heard during my three-day stay were the low moans of winter wind outdoors and the wood-stove crackling and Zoey's click-clacks and occasionally Bethany yelling at the dog or at some inanimate object in the house that wasn't doing what it was supposed to.<br />
<br />
While I was her guest, she kept the wood-stove burning, and sometimes I got so warm I sweat profusely.<br />
<br />
Bethany dimmed the lights each of the two evenings I slept there, and just as I would rest my eyes on the comfy couch, she began to play the bongos. Her beat started quietly and then increased in volume and tempo, as she began chanting a conglomeration of intonations laced with unpredictably placed syllabic accents. It sounded soothing, and mysterious, like a Native American prayer. A speaking in tongues. A song with no words, and yet with so many.<br />
<br />
She cooked me eggs and toast each morning, and pleaded with me to take a jog with her each day. On the third day, just before leaving, I finally obliged. I knew I was out of shape, and within a half mile, I felt the weakness around my knees fill with pain. She left me behind and finished her jog without me. I walked best I could and met her on her return, then we walked back up the huge hill to her house together, admiring the waterfalls on the way.<br />
<br />
When it was time for me to leave, she said she didn't want to give me a hug because it would be weird to make a big deal out of saying goodbye. I was all like, yeah, of course, totally.<br />
<br />
"See you again soon, I'm sure." I said.<br />
<br />
"Text me when you get back home! Drive safe! I love you!" She yelled back as I pulled out with my window down, waving.<br />
<br />
It was an unexpected and bittersweet parting that perhaps only formerly estranged sisters can begin to appreciate.<br />
<br />
I'll see her again at Christmas, I reminded myself. It was sad to leave. We had watched <i>How I Met Your Mother </i>on Netflix together, and during Season 4, Episode 6, we gave each other a knowing glance when in the final moments of the show Ted Mosby told his children, "Kids you may think your only choices are to swallow your anger or throw it in someone's face, but there's a third option. You can just let it go, and only when you do that is it really gone, and you can move forward."<br />
<br />
My sister and I moved forward. She took me into her home. She forgave me for all those spats we had as kids, and moreso for all the years I ignored her while focusing my energy on Geoff. Our past pains and sorrows, mostly hers, were now farts in the wind. She let them go. I was now her sister again. Maybe even for the first time.<br />
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<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>Work</b></u><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
After leaving Geoff I didn't know how I would support myself. All those sub calls I'd ignored I couldn't afford to ignore anymore. But even subbing wasn't going to cut it, I decided.<br />
<br />
We finished out our off-season in the beach rental. Friends came to visit that Memorial Day Weekend and Geoff and I entertained, keeping our breakup a secret for the most part, though I suspect Liam spilled the beans. It was a sad time for all of us. I didn't go on the fishing boat that year.<br />
<br />
When it was time to move out at the end of May, I found a live-in nanny job in Wakefield and packed up 4 suitcases and my keyboard and P.A. I didn't really have much. Both houses we'd lived in were furnished, so we hadn't accumulated furniture. Geoff took everything else - the bikes, kitchenware, dvd's, gadgets, and whatchamacallits, back to his parents' vacation house. It was a really sad time.<br />
<br />
Despite being broken up, Geoff visited me where I nannied and sneaked me into his parents home for sex about twice a week. We continued to go out to bars and restaurants, only he paid since I was on my own now. He treated me kinder and lovemaking was sweeter than ever - especially knowing each time might be our last - and then each goodbye was gut-wrenching - knowing we each needed to at some point move on - such sweet sorrow were these goodbyes between us, best put.<br />
<br />
We went on walks and drives, and talked on the phone most nights.<br />
<br />
In August my birthday rolled around and he dropped a gift off to me, but had to leave in a hurry. He was all dressed up.<br />
<br />
I was on FaceBook that evening and saw his name tagged in a FaceBook post:<br />
<br />
"Enjoying dirty martinis with Geoff at Matunuck Oyster Bar!" The girl who tagged him I didn't recognize, but she had lots of cleavage showing in her profile picture.<br />
<br />
I drove to the Oyster Bar restaurant and approached their table, my birthday gifts from Geoff in hand. <br />
I said hello to he and his date. I got a good look at her. She was about twenty pounds heavier than me and that helped my heart rate come down just enough to turn and leave with only doing minor damage to Geoff's VW Golf before driving away. I shattered the glass elephant he'd bought me and used the broken glass to scratch the entire driver side of his car.<br />
<br />
Since it was a new leased car, I felt vindicated. I bragged about it on Facebook. Supportive friends likened me to having a Carrie Underwood moment.<br />
<br />
And that was the end of the sex part of our relationship.<br />
<br />
I looked for a job outside of RI and found one in NYC, nannying, for $1500/week, but it ended after three months because my boss and I had a cultural conflict, and I didn't really want to move to Riyadh and live in a Muslim castle. <br />
<br />
My boss, whom I lived with in a small apartment, sat me down for bi-weekly verbal lashings to test my temper, to make sure I was ready to be taken back to the royal palace. I think he was probably a spy. He had white noise machines in every room and we moved three times while I lived with them. We lived in Downtown NYC, Lower Eastside, then Upper Eastside. He would wait until 3 a.m each night to make phone calls where he spoke in Arabic and berated me if I used the bathroom, since I could be listening to him.<br />
"Why are you up listening to my phone call!"<br />
<br />
"I have to pee."<br />
<br />
"We will discuss in the morning!"<br />
<br />
"Okay."<br />
<br />
When that gig ended - and it paid well- I mean I got Lasik corrective eye surgery plus bought awesome Christmas presents for my parents and Geoff (yes we missed each other and started having sex again, on Sundays, my day off, when I'd take the 5:30 a.m. bus from NYC to Providence and he'd pick me up and we'd spend a whole day being kids together and doing everything fun under the sun until late afternoon when he'd return me). I was also able to settle all my credit card debt from what this nanny job paid. But when this nanny job ended, I really couldn't return to Rhode Island. It was time to finally say good-bye to Geoff.<br />
<br />
My final week of nannying in NYC, I asked Geoff to come spend the weekend at a hotel with me there. He understood the implications of my leaving this time. I booked a room on the top floor of the Sheraton in Times Square. Our time was a mix of pleasant and somber. We were grown ups now. This was good-bye.<br />
<br />
I took us out to a fancy Indian restaurant. He really seemed to love it. We watched a movie in bed and I fell asleep spooning him a little while before turning the other way. It was the last time we shared a bed together.<br />
<br />
The next morning we shared nothing more intimate than a kiss before parting ways. I took a train to Port Henry where my dad picked me up. </div>
<br />
<br />Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-11765521468848282912017-02-10T06:41:00.002-08:002018-08-07T11:48:14.540-07:00The Story of Geoff: Ch. 1<style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120%; }</style>
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Chapter 1: Memory</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Story of Geoff:
Chapter 1</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><u>The Beginning of
the End</u></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
It's funny how music
brings you back. Back to memory. Back to feelings. Feelings you may
not even want to recall. Funny may not even be the right word here.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I recall the song
played on my phone alarm years ago. A melody really. A symphony. A
violin with piano notes sprinkled throughout. It was sad. Sad because
it woke me up, sad because of how it sounded, sad because of the
season of my life in which it played.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I was living with my
boyfriend Geoff, in Matunuck Beach, Rhode Island. We had a cozy
off-season beach rental just a few steps away from the oldest Irish
pub in the smallest state of the Union. This was our treasured nook.
We'd spent seven years since meeting as teenagers in college,
pursuing degrees, and entering the work force to get to here. And
here was it.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Here was a dead end
road at the edge of nowhere, but it was our nowhere. We had friends
from all corners of the country come to visit during each of the
three off-seasons we stayed in this cottage we called home. We
chartered a deep sea fishing boat on Memorial Day Weekends when they
visited, had cookouts, played horseshoes and board games, and drank
beer. Geoff told hilarious pee-your-pants stories that always made
someone spit out their beer or choke on it. Somebody always drank too
much and threw-up or woke up with a mystery bruise, or both. Somebody
else would inevitably fall asleep in an awkward location like outside
in a lawn chair with a cooler cover as a blanket. Memories were made
on these weekends. And the following year we'd point fingers and
laugh about these memories made the year before.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
When the off-season
ended, usually the first week of June, Geoff and I moved out of the
beach house and into his parents' vacation home in Wakefield, about 5
miles away. His mother was a teacher and his father was
retired, so they spent summers with us. They were like my second
family, Geoff's mom and dad and sister, who attended URI. For the
decade Geoff and I dated, I spent more time with his family than I
did with my own.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Guy and Barb had two
Schwinn bicycles leftover from the 70's - a green and a yellow - a
his and a hers - that Geoff and I would ride through the South County
bike trails each of the three summers in RI we spent there. It cost
$50 a year getting them tuned up at a local bike shop, and they rode
like the wind. My yellow bicycle was one of the hardest things to
part with when the relationship ended. I really loved that bicycle. I
wish I had known the last time I rode it that it would be the last
time, so I could have made a mental note to stand up on the pedals
going downhill a few extra seconds, and savor the breeze in my hair,
and take the long way home instead of a shortcut. Stuff like that. I
don't even remember my last bike ride now.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Geoff and I made it
a priority to check out every pub, bistro, brewery, and wine cellar
in the state of Rhode Island when we first moved. So at least three
or four nights per week, we went out. We drank. We ate. Financial
hardship put the final nail in the coffin of our relationship. It
only took three years of bliss to do that. It was a vicious cycle
that crept us into debt, as I secretly activated new credit cards
that came in the mail, and used them to ease the pain of not having
money with spending money we didn't have.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But in-between the
visits from friends and family, and between bike rides to
Narragansett Beach and sea-glass beach walks along Matunuck and bar
outings, there was misery. The silence in our evenings spent at home
was punctuated with thoughts of would-be chatter of little children,
had I had them, having reached the age of 29. But I'd been turned
down for every public sector education job I applied for, about 50
jobs, during the entirety of my 20's, and had resigned to babysitting
and substitute teaching and cleaning houses. Evenings spent at home
pondering my would-be life away, particularly between the months of
November-March, felt as dull as the overcast ocean sky. It never
changed color during these winter months, just different hues of
grey, although there were moments each day that light would peak
through around noon, but I was usually too sad to notice.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Going out with Geoff
at night was virtual Vicodin for wintertime. Alcohol and good food
made all our problems disappear, at least for a couple hours.
Everything was alright at the end of the day when the sound of
conversation and laughter was all around. All was well within my
soul. A burden was lifted. We needed this and I justified it not so
much for me but moreso for Geoff. He worked hard - going into an
office and staring at a computer screen all day for some boring
marketing company.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I sat home and wrote
beautiful sad songs on my Yamaha Portable Grand keyboard, often
ignoring incoming calls to substitute teach, snoozing and sleeping
through my sad violin alarm melody when it played. Geoff and I had
separate bedrooms because he liked to be up late on his computer and
was sort of a slob. I kept my room neat. I also liked to be sprawled
out when I slept. I woke up earlier than him too. I had an 8 a.m.
babysitting job on Mondays and Tuesdays in Snug Harbor and sometimes
cleaned a house in Saunderstown on Wednesdays. But this was small
beans compared to his very important 9-5 desk job that brought in
double my salary, and health benefits to us both.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
My real
responsibilities came at night. I felt my duty was to make Geoff feel
comfortable and happy when he came home from work, as I grew up
watching my stay-at-home mom prepare dinners and keep a tidy home.
She played church songs on piano and sang loud hymns to the Lord. She
invited over guests and planned wild birthday parties for my father,
sister, and I. She always put herself last. Our home was always
lively, though after bedtime I'd hear her cry. I didn't know what my
parents argued about but as I grew older I suspected it was due in
part to her own self-inflicted last place taken in the family line.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Geoff would question
my spending whenever I ran errands. I tried to minimize my grocery
shopping and keep the fridge bare, apart from some beer and eggs and
cheese and bread. If I spent too much money on food, there would be a
verbal altercation. It wouldn't last long however, as Geoff could
never stay angry for long. He would grow bored easily though,
especially in the long silent evening hours of winter, and so when I
didn't have a dinner to prepare, I would take him out and use a
credit card. He was always up for that.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
That was my biblical
duty, I decided. Proverbs 14:1 says "The wise woman builds her
house..." and I suppose since I could not force marriage and
children on Geoff and build our home to accommodate Geoff's needs,
and tidiness didn't impress him, I could resort to taking Geoff out
to a place where the hustle and bustle and chatter of others would
make us feel alive. The atmosphere of a new restaurant is
intoxicating. We didn't drink heavily. Often we found a coupon online
and printed it out. We'd anticipate the new sights and sounds and
flavors on the drive, and just get out. It was great. Out of the
empty cottage we'd go. We didn't have cable. This was our
stimulation. Our drug. Our therapy. I'm telling you, I justified this
tedious spending habit to a T. This was my way of showing Geoff love.
Being a good woman, partner, and friend. I could deal with the debt
and collection calls later. I didn't care about all that. I cared
about Geoff. I loved seeing him smile. I loved hearing his stories
and jokes. What did he read on The Onion today? I loved how he made
me laugh. I loved how he twisted his thoughts into words and how he
craved me physically after an evening of conversation. How we spooned
and shared a bed on these nights as well.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But suddenly one day
three years later I wasn't happy anymore. We'd been together a
decade. He'd recently proposed. It was the craziest thing. I'd never
considered my own feelings maybe until one day I noticed. I noticed
they were gone. I gave the ring back. And seven years later, I still
grieve this man who is still alive. Whom I still love. And this is
where I take you back, reader, to the beginning of the story. The
story of Geoff. And how it came to unfold that I let him go. For
Richard Bach gave us the famous quote, "If you love something
set it free; if it comes back it's yours, if it doesn't, it never
was."</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><u>The Beginning</u></b></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Let's try to
sneak into Roomers tonight! I have just the right outfit to wear and
what you're wearing is perrrrfect, HA!" My friend Rachel
snickered and slapped my ass as she finished wiping down her last
table and pocketing a large tip, surely made by flirting with her
customers, a group of four muscular hockey players who were competing
in this weekend's Can/Am tournament, one of many in the seemingly
endless winters Lake Placid, NY has to offer.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"I'll meet you
at your place when I'm done and we'll see, I don't know."</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Don't be such
a pussy!" Rachel made some cat noises and clawed her right
fingers down my bosom, making me feel slightly uncomfortable. She
counted out enough tip money to make the sous chef cry and then
skipped out the door and across the street to her second story
apartment to prepare for a night out dancing.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Rachel was only
fifteen at the time, but was a figure skater with a scholarship to
attend a boarding school in Lake Placid. Her four brothers also
attended the National Sports Academy with scholarships to play
hockey. She was the middle child and somewhat of a tomboy when it
came to athleticism, but strikingly sexual. Her body was extremely
curvy and she knew how to move it both on the skating rink and on the
dance floor. Whenever I was with her, men flocked like baby birds.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
On this particular
night however, I got held up on my way over to Rachel's apartment. I
got stopped by the pizza delivery guy. He wanted to introduce me to
his friend.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Erin, hold up.
This is Geoff. My friend who goes to St. Lawrence with you."</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I walked over to the
pizza delivery guy and a few other workers gathered outside the
restaurant and we all talked for a few minutes. Geoff shook my hand.
We exchanged information about our college schedules and first
impressions of SLU.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Geoff this is
the hot phone girl I've been telling you about."</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Brett you told
him I was a hot phone girl?"</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Well you
answer the phones, and you're hot."</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Geoff's pasty Irish
face turned beet red. It was funny. I blushed too. Geoff was
pleasantly awkward and had a strangely deep voice. He chose his words
carefully when he spoke. Everybody in the huddle stopped to listen
when he did. It was cold out and our jackets were all touching, about
five of us bundled together, a short and strangely intimate wintery
evening conversation.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Maybe I'll
catch you at school when next semester starts."</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Leaving so
soon?" Brett asked.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Rachel wants
to try to sneak into Roomers." I whined.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"That girl's
only 16!"</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"She's 15,
don't tell Mr. Mike, or she'll not be able to waitress anymore -"</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Holy shit! -"</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Yeah, she has
a fake ID, she's gonna use color pencils on mine, I dunno -"</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Well good
luck, are you working tomorrow?"</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Next weekend."</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Okay let's do
something, let's plan a trip to Montreal sometime, Geoff's game for
that, right Gayward?"</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Umm, yeah,
sure, Montreal, sweet."</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Bye guys, nice
meeting you Geoff." I ran across the street, my legs shivering,
as I had a short skirt on and it was probably twenty degrees out.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I wondered if Geoff
noticed how nice my calves were. I always had nice calves. I'm sure
he noticed. He got to see much more than my calves a few months later
anyhow.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><u>Sick Spaghetti</u></b></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Two weekends after
meeting Geoff, Brett organized a group trip to Canada, where 18- and
19-year-olds could drink and be irresponsible. Not that we weren't
already doing that on weekends in Lake Placid and during our
semesters spent at college, but now we could do it somewhere else and
feel even cooler about it I suppose.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Geoff borrowed his
father's Ford Expedition and Brett drove his Toyota 4runner and
altogether 7 of us drove to St. Catherine Street in downtown Montreal
and rented two adjoining hotel rooms. I had money saved from
answering phones at the pizza place, Rachel had money saved from
waiting tables there, and of course Brett delivered pizzas, and as it
turned out Geoff worked at the bowling alley next door. It was like
we were all meant to be friends. Geoff and I were still on winter
break from college and this would be a time to really get to know one
another before getting back to school.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
As soon as we
arrived at the Marriott, Rachel disappeared into a crowd of sexy men
(and perhaps women) with whom to co-mingle in the hotel lounge. She
returned the next day when we checked out and Brett delivered her
safely back to boarding school.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The day and evening
spent on St. Catherine Street was a blur of clubs and lights and
drinks. One of our friends, Liam, disappeared into a strip club and
didn't answer his cell phone well into the next day, hours past
checkout. Geoff and I had to leave without him, to get Geoff's dad's
car back on time, but Brett and the others stayed and recovered Liam
from a waffle joint where he was treating two bouncers to brunch as
an apology for his lewd behavior the night before. Apparently he'd
touched a stripper inappropriately during a lap dance, but was
forgiven when calling his doctor for a verbal doctor note explaining
his condition, one in which he had some sort of inability to control
hand movements when aroused. Liam also had ADHD and Tourette's
Syndrome, and left me perplexed beyond explanation after our first
year's worth of conversations, but I came to appreciate him as you
might an eighth wonder of the world. He was a hoot and was always
included on outings with Brett's circle of friends. Believe it or
not, Liam went on to law school and now has his own firm in Lake
Placid.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But during this
Montreal overnight trip, Geoff and I were strangers. We mingled in
the group, and probably liked one another but were shy about it for
the most part. It was upon checking out, that Brett took it upon
himself to invite everyone besides Geoff and I to carpool with him,
leaving Geoff and I to drive back together. That great big SUV and
just the two of us.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now I don't remember
my phone number some days or even my age all the time, but I remember
that car ride well. I remember the first impression Geoff left on me
when we had that first alone time together. That vibe, if you will.
How easy he was to talk to. How comfortable I felt with him. I could
have sat and taken a road trip across the countries of Canada and the
U.S. combined in one big circle only stopping for food and use of the
bathroom. His energy was so content, so balanced. He had good taste
in music and wanted to make sure I liked what he was listening to as
well. Once in a while he turned the music down or off, and just let a
stillness set between us.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
He was a boy raised
with manners and was full of stories yet dispersed them with silences
and pauses, as to not talk my ear off, though I craved at times he
would. All this in a drive of under two hours.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
When we reached
Plattsburgh, Geoff suggested stopping at the mall to stretch our legs
and get a bite to eat. I excitedly obliged, saying I wanted Chinese
in the Food Court, and hopefully they'd have free samples, though I'd
be buying a meal anyhow.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Much to my dismay,
he wasn't a big fan of Chinese. I think he got Burger King or Pizza,
I can't remember. I purchased a plate of chicken lo mein with two
sets of chop sticks and encouraged Geoff to try using chopsticks with
me. I showed him how to hold one like a pencil and pinch the other.
He adamantly refused. I insisted he give me one good reason why he so
refused to try lo mein (I even said he could avoid the chicken meat
if he thought it might be cat or dog meat), and he finally told me
this:</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Lo mein just
doesn't look right. It looks like spaghetti that got sick. I just
can't do it. I'm sorry."</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I processed what he
said, and started to laugh. I had some lo mein in my mouth, and it
started coming out of my mouth. I could barely swallow all of a
sudden. Then I thought of what he said some more, and decided I could
not eat anymore of this sick spaghetti either. To this day, I cannot
eat lo mein. Geoff ruined lo mein for me, forever.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
That was the first
time Geoff made me laugh. It was such an uncontrollable laugh, and
his words left such a marked impression on me. This is when I believe
I fell in love with Geoff. The sick spaghetti comment. A decade
later, after I'd left Geoff and began mourning the loss of him, I
wrote a poem one day, and a line came out of that poem that gave me
some clarity about love. And that line was this: "A man who
makes you laugh - hold onto that one like a shadow at high noon."</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
On the day I left
Geoff I didn't know the reason I left, but in the days and weeks and
months and years that passed after leaving, clarity came. It was like
taking steps backward from a mountain until finally you see the whole
thing for what it is.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
One of the reasons I
initially thought I left, is that I thought that fundamentally, a
partnership needs a stronger foundation than good sex and laughter at
the end of the day. A good partnership needed financial stability, a
strong parallel faith in God, and a coming together on politics.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
No, I've had to step
back even farther. And I see a bigger picture now. A healthy
partnership comes with a significant other who makes you smile, makes
you cry, and makes you laugh. A lifetime partner makes you feel
alive. He makes you want to wake up in the morning. He makes you want
to take on a new adventure each day. He simply makes you feel. That
is what love is. I know that now. I see it. I had to walk far, far
away to learn that.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><u>Our First Time</u></b></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
For the life of me I
can't remember when Geoff and I were officially a couple or when our
first kiss happened or when we first held hands. But as most couples
have a hard time forgetting their first most intimate moments, I will
never forget ours.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
It happened in his
dorm room at St. Lawrence University, Whitman Hall, second floor,
close to the balcony. He had a single room, nothing fancy, but it was
all we needed to get the job done.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I'll spare the
details meant only for he and I, and just say that we exchanged those
three special words that come with any promotion of relationship. I
said them first, and asked him not to reciprocate, since I was just
sharing how I felt. I loved him.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But he couldn't
resist, it seemed, to say them back. And after saying them he went to
the opposite end of his room, only 15 feet away maybe, and turned off
the light, so only his computer monitor shed a dim glow in the center
of the room, and our dark bodies - his standing at one end and mine
lying atop the bed at the other, waited for each other like weak
magnets, controlled only by our very weak momentary willpower, as he
pulled off his t-shirt, baring his soft and boyish skin.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I wanted to touch
it. His chest and stomach. Shoulders and back. He had no hair there
at all. I found that extremely sexy. I'd brought a night slip to his
room and planned this out, and had changed into it somehow as sort of
a surprise for him. I was ready to give myself to him and take him
into me. He would be my first, though he didn't know it. I had let
him think he was my second, since I was shy and a little embarrassed
at my virginity, being a sophomore in college and all. He was a
freshman and had let me know in not so many words, that he was not a
virgin. But I believed I was the first girl he loved, and that's all
that mattered. I loved this boy, this Geoff. I believed I would marry
him someday, probably soon after we graduated college, if not the day
after! We would have children soon after that, buy a house, land
jobs, and live happily ever after. This was the man of my dreams, and
he was about to make love to me.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
When it was all
over, I replayed our lovemaking over and over again in my mind
throughout the night and throughout the next day, sometimes
inadvertently squealing aloud to myself. I was just in a tizzy. My
stomach was in knots. I was beyond infatuated. I was intoxicated with
this Geoff and with how his body had moved with mine. How he'd looked
into my eyes while we moved together, how he'd been somewhat shy and
sensitive to how I felt while we moved and shifted and took our time
feeling one another out. I'd never known sex could be so beautiful
and non-awkward and slippery and feel-good. It surpassed any
experience I went on to have at college, any high or buzz or
anything. This one takes the cake. My first, with Geoff.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
We went on to
explore this newfound passion for each others' bodies for a decade
and it never grew dull, though no experience ever quite lived up to
that first one. We did grow a little self conscious as we put on
weight over the years, but I never stopped loving his skin or how he
felt inside of me. He had a gentle rhythm and we rocked just right
together. Even after a decade, we were still exploring new ways to
please one another, though I was a timid lover and Geoff's appetite
for sex grew as his appetite for food did and I felt diminished in my
capacity to please him as the years went on.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><u>The Bird</u></b></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
College didn't end
with wedding bells and baby diapers. We did however inherit a bird.
Not the animal kind. It was a human bird. Let me explain.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
We decided to settle
down in Saranac Lake, where Geoff's parents lived and where each of
us worked. I was a substitute teacher and Geoff wrote for the
Adirondack Daily Enterprise. So we did what any normal couple fresh
out of college would do. We rented a house and lived together, and
sublet an extra room to a stranger.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now let me say, this
stranger was not creepy but he was strange. He was such a strange
bird, that we actually called him <i>the bird</i>. He was perched
atop the house. As close as one could be to living on the rafters and
tile, this bird resided.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
His real name was
Jason, and that is what we called him to his face. We only called him
bird behind his back, as to not be mean. He lived on the third floor
of our A-frame abode with a bird's eye view of Bloomingdale Avenue's
railroad tracks in downtown Saranac Lake.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Our first impression
of the bird was that he looked extremely malnourished, or perhaps he
was naturally just a small boned person. His head was particularly
tiny, and we sometimes joked that he had a bird-brain.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Jason worked at a
factory one hour away, and was up before the crack of dawn. Hours
later when Geoff and I awoke, we'd commend the early bird for
catching his worm.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"The bird has
flown," Geoff remarked one morning.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"I'm surprised
he gets up that early when he stays up so late playing guitar,"
I commented back.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Yeah wasn't
that Free Bird he was playing last night?" Geoff joked.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Haha. He's
free as a bird. He ought to find some other birds to play with too.
Start a bird band."</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Birds of a
feather flock together."</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
"Oh yeah, I've
heard that before. I think a little bird told me that."</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Geoff and I laughed.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The bird brought us
lots of laughter.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Geoff brought me
lots of laughter. The bird could have brought me lots of strife. He
was a stranger living in our home and tried to hang out with us
sometimes and it got awkward. But Geoff always made the bird feel
comfortable and had a way of excusing us from the social scene when
he felt I needed my space.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Geoff had a way of
spinning things - situations - to make them laughable. He made life
colorful. He colored my 20's with bird jokes and good music,
interesting films and comedians, YouTube videos and Onion articles,
music festivals and outdoor adventures.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
He also invited his
friends into our lives. Not just the bird. The bird was not actually
our friend. But we had other friends I would not have had without
Geoff. One of those friends being Liam. Liam and Meredith and Gigno
and Titus, just to name a few. There was also Brett and Melissa, who
we matched up after meeting Melissa in Rhode Island. They now live
out West together. Meredith lives out West, too. In fact, everybody
has moved on with their lives it seems. Everyone except for me. I
live with my parents and blog and take medications that supposedly
treat mental illness.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Geoff is a writer
too, and has moved on relationship-wise. I can't picture myself ever
seriously settling down with another person. Even though six years has passed since our break-up at this time of writing (2017).</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Love doesn't pay the
bills. Not having money pulled the last Jenga block out of our
relationship. It became the source of stress for so many other issues
that would have been non-issues otherwise. We'd not have been arguing
about how messy his room was, for example, if we'd had the money to
own our own home, with a master bedroom with furniture to put all his
clothes in drawers and closets. We'd not have been arguing about late
night boredom if we'd had money to afford cable at the beach-house.
We'd not have been arguing over how fat we were getting if we weren't
so depressed. Poverty is depressing. Debt drained the luster out of
our everyday life. Hence, the drinking.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
When we argued it
was only when we were sober. I'd go after him only verbally, but with
the accuracy of a peregrine falcon diving after it's prey. I'd use
such intentional effort to strike with accuracy, a target which was
somewhat already dead. Geoff never wanted to argue. He would sit
motionless and silent, save for apologizing for whatever he did or
did not do wrong, until my rant was over.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Geoff never
reciprocated a provocative word to me in all our decade together. He
did frown upon spending money on groceries. Beer and eventually lemon vodka became a daily necessity for Geoff. Comic books and Magic the Gathering cards became a weekly expense. Geoff liked to spend money but our fridge was always bare.<br />
<br />
But Geoff had a way of soothing me, making me feel like everything would be okay, even when I sensed it wasn't. He offered foot rubs almost daily. Alcohol calmed me, too.<style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120%; }</style>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
But my resentments
built up over the years. Day by day, little by little, comments would
escape my lips until it became a daily ritual to emasculate him
verbally.
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Until one day I
arrived at the point of forgetting who it was that I fell in love
with in the beginning. I found myself at a somewhat literal dead-end road of feelings. And so I ran away.</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-39285488985268691242017-02-02T16:14:00.003-08:002017-02-02T16:14:57.339-08:00The Last Time <u>The <span class="il">Last</span> <span class="il">Time</span></u><br />
<div>
<br />The <span class="il">last</span> <span class="il">time</span> that we spoke, you called me on the phone</div>
<div>
It was Christmas Eve, and I was all alone</div>
<div>
You had another girl, and she didn't know you cared about me still</div>
<div>
So I spared no unkind words to your good will</div>
<div>
And we never spoke again</div>
<div>
<br /><br />This isn't how our story's meant to end<br />But sometimes something special just ain't over<br />Until you cut the cord and do a drastic thing<br />You gotta lash right out and sometimes you gotta scream</div>
<div>
And take your <span class="il">time</span> away to heal and grow new limbs</div>
<div>
Shed those weak old branches, get over him</div>
<div>
But what hurts most (is this)</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
I never got to say good-bye the right way</div>
So here's to saying hi again someday<br />We've grown apart it's so cliche<br />But cliche's happen that's why they're cliches<br /><br />The <span class="il">last</span> <span class="il">time</span> we embraced, you met me at a bar<br />It was a place by your favorite comic store<br />You didn't have to meet me but you knew I'd be there<br />And you couldn't help yourself from being polite<br />You were always so kind - kindness was your middle name<br />You cared about people, you cared about the earth<br />I don't really think that has changed<br />But I had to make you stop caring about me<br />So I had to lash out and show you crazy<br /><div>
<br /></div>
This isn't how our story's meant to end<br />But sometimes something special just ain't over<br />Until you cut the cord and do a drastic thing<br />You gotta lash right out and sometimes you gotta scream<br />And take your <span class="il">time</span> away to heal and grow new limbs<br />Shed those weak old branches, get over him<br />But what hurts most (is this)<br /><br />
I never got to say good-bye the right way<br />So here's to saying hi again someday<br />We've grown apart it's so cliche<br />But cliche's happen that's why they're cliche's<br /><br />The <span class="il">last</span> <span class="il">time</span> I dreamed of you<br />
<div>
You were walking toward me</div>
<div>
You were smiling like I'd never seen you smile</div>
<div>
The past was behind us, we were new people now</div>
<div>
I hope that day comes soon.</div>
Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-76288611821067168982016-12-29T21:37:00.001-08:002016-12-30T05:06:25.167-08:00Funeral CelebrationsSo I had this thought that somewhere in the world there must exist this cool tiny country or village where funerals were joyful, not sad. Celebrations of life, if you will. A place where even mothers who lost their young children could devote a short period of time, an hour or two, to holding hands with neighbors and friends and relatives. In this obscure village they would laugh as they remembered through stories and pictures they told with sticks in sand, the child who had passed, as they embraced one another.<br />
<br />
It would only be after this period of celebration that the body, placed in it's box, would be presented for burial.<br />
<br />
I attended a funeral three weeks ago. Two parents had lost a son, two siblings a brother. The family called the service a celebration of life. The casket was in the room, but a PowerPoint photo presentation and guitar player and accompanying bass guitar, singers, and story-tellers comprised the centerpiece. <br />
<br />
An earthquake happened in my body that day, and I was shaken.<br />
<br />
One by one, family members and friends shared stories about this young person who had passed.<br />
<br />
I'd brought Kleenex, but apparently not enough.<br />
<br />
I'd worn sunglasses, but apparently they weren't too sagacious because my mother ended up handing me more tissues from her purse as well.<br />
<br />
Eventually I got up and grabbed a box from the next aisle over.<br />
<br />
When story-time was finally over I was grateful. I couldn't bear it anymore. But I went home feeling changed and grateful for the experience. Lots of people were moved, from this funeral celebration service. I decided I'd blog about it. <br />
<br />
I Googled it to start, funeral celebrations, and was disappointed. I read a lame article on Business Insider that some weirdo yuppie with purple hair surely wrote, which categorized five types of funerals in five major countries. Boooo. And that feminist-economist-slacker-writer-wannabe probably charged a day's wages to BI and got paid $500 for her posed labor.<br />
<br />
But what I really wanted Google to tell me, and I went 17 pages deep! was whether this cool little tiny village really existed where people didn't automatically do something sad or bizarre like eating someone's burned bone ashes. Can't there just be a celebration of someone's life? Can't we just honor a person for having lived? Isn't talking about the deceased and giving one another a hug a normal thing? Can't all cultures agree on that?<br />
<br />
Are people typically sad all around the world at funerals? Can you tell me that Google? Instead of throwing up this BI BS?<br />
<br />
Are we supposed to be sad? Would the person who just died have wanted us to walk around in black dresses and suits and hang our heads? <br />
<br />
What if something amazing just happened earlier that day and someone happens to be really happy? Is it okay for someone to be really happy at a funeral?<br />
<br />
Are we allowed to stay home if we feel too upset to go? How much emotion is it okay to show?<br />
<br />
I've been wondering about why I cried so much at that funeral celebration. It was kind of ridiculous, honestly, how much I cried. I just had a storm brewing inside I guess. Emotions are like the rumbles that happen way deep down at the ocean floor, but sometimes those rumbles cause shifts and all of a sudden the sea comes tsunami'ing out. <br />
<br />
I won't be talking to my family about how I want my funeral to pan out anytime soon, but when my uncle passed away three months ago, he had every detail of his funeral worked out. He asked his youngest of three daughters to officiate the service, too. She did a great job, really holding it together. I don't know how she did it. I bawled when I watched the video. She had this beautiful glow. It made me wonder at the gratitude for her almost 35 years shared on this (somewhat still) green planet with her dad. The same amount of time I've had with mine. How lucky I am to have my father here still.<br />
<br />
Death certainly puts things in perspective for those of us who are still living. It makes us hold each other a little more closely. Even for those of us who don't really hug. I'm holding my family closer in my heart and thoughts this holiday season for sure. It seems that death this winter has been all around.<br />
<br />
I wasn't very close to my uncle. He was hard to be close to. His wife and daughters were the only ones he really let in.<br />
<br />
He was a very tall man. I remember looking up to him, literally, from a very young age, and I never stopped. He pastored a church and was a true bible scholar, but also a man of very few words, ironically. Uncle Royal. Uncle Ironic. He seemed to do plenty of speaking in his final months, finely crafting his funeral service. Every t was crossed, i dotted. He and his daughters sang hymns during the final days of his life spent in hospice care, and my aunt shared pictures through email with my mom and I. It's hard to even write about this. Something about old Christian hymns, and going to meet Jesus. There's something so powerful in that. <br />
<br />
His funeral service was not quite a celebration. But it was not a sad event either. It was upbeat, formal, and at times, entertaining! It was an honorary service to the Lord. Royal had picked out hymns, scriptures, and a blue grass gospel video, all honoring the Jesus he preached about for over 40 years.<br />
<br />
Maybe not everybody wants people to make a big fuss over them when they die. And I for one don't want to even talk about it. Well, that's kind of hypocritical to say. But I don't want to even think about it as far as my own funeral, at least not yet. But I think it's good to think about in general terms, anyhow. It's good that we can explore different models of how to let go here in the liberal Western world, where anything goes. We're not bound by tradition, although some people still are, and there's comfort in that to some extent. I hope we continue to break away from traditions that don't serve to better us, however, when it comes to helping us grieve in healthy ways.<br />
<br />
<br />Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-77562418664239282652016-07-13T20:06:00.001-07:002017-11-26T01:36:05.195-08:00CookiesSo I'm living at home with my parents and baking cookies. That is my life now. It's been reduced to butter, flour and sugar. Pretty much.<br />
<br />
I don't know what to blog about anymore. I thought maybe there would be a story in this baking of cookies, but there's not. And there isn't much else, either. I just bake cookies. Everyday. And tape labels onto bags. I feel kind of like a one-woman factory.<br />
<br />
I indulge in cookie dough, and this is a problem. I've gained 20 lbs in the past 2 months, though I'm only back up to my original 125'ish weight, so I can't complain. Yet. But what if it's another 20 this Fall. And by winter I'll just commit health suicide. I'm already beginning to not care anymore. Not about being healthy, not about being skinny. It doesn't matter. <br />
<br />
The cookie dough also inhibits my ability to do a 3rd annual FaceBook bikini picture this summer. If I do one, I might just let it all hang out, belly and all. I'll slouch a little. Not shave my armpits for a week before the shoot. And lift my arms while squatting, sumo style. It could be funny.<br />
<br />
Who have I become? <br />
<br />
I didn't even go outside today. I did briefly, to get something in my car, and it was hot as hell, and I was thankful for my parents' dark shaded home, which kept somewhat cool, though I slaved over a 400 degree oven all day, and got about 50 brief facial steams in opening the oven and bending my entire upper body impatiently into it's belly when retrieving cookie pans.<br />
<br />
I played with my dogs - 3 miniature schnauzers. Two are puppies and recent additions to my parents' home. Elmer (the boy) and Dutchess (the girl). With our third dog Brody, these names match in first letters to my names. Erin Danielle Boyea. Elmer Dutchess Brody. I think my parents subconsciously gave these dogs these names because they love me more than my sister.<br />
<br />
That was a joke. It's just a neat coincidence. But I do think my parents love me the most.<br />
<br />
They have to. I bake them cookies (and many other things) everyday. I vacuum. I play with the dogs. I get the mail. I do the dishes.<br />
<br />
My mom gets mad at me though when I outscore her on Dots on her iPad. She hasn't figured out how to predict where the dots will fall to make a square.<br />
<br />
I guess that's it. I'm still watching Bob Ross on Netflix. He makes me feel calm. The anxiety comes at night and I'm tired of running away from it. I sit through the cold sweats and focus on paint. How it all comes together in a picture. I contemplate the beauty of life for those who find and master their gifts.<br />
<br />
I looked up Bob Ross the other day to see how old he is. I guess he died in '95. Some form of cancer I think. Maybe from all the paint fumes. I don't know.<br />
<br />
I thought I'd be playing music this summer, but the cookies took over. Until my administrative leave paychecks from my last job suddenly came to an end 2 weeks ago. I won't be able to purchase ingredients to bake cookies much longer. I'm already giving away more cookies than I sell from each batch. If I'd known my paychecks would abruptly end I'd never have invested in starting this cookie baking business. I'd have let my paychecks go into a savings account. Lord knows how long I'd be able to survive on a couple thousand dollars. Now I have to survive on zero dollars and the good grace of my parents. Thirty-four years old and this is what my life's amounted to. Zero. It's tough being out of a job with no pay. It's tough having seizures that come about now whenever I get upset. I'm afraid. I'm depressed.<br />
<br />
For my thyroid readers, my June levels were TSH .008, up from .002 in March. But I saw an endocrinologist who said my PCP should not have decreased my thyroid medication by so much, and she is now increasing my dosage slightly and taking over my thyroid care. Summer and winter dosage requirements might differ based on my history, I realize. I'm lucky to have insurance that affords me a specialist visit like that. Hopefully my former employer won't cut out my health insurance while I'm on this suddenly extended and now unpaid medical leave. Hopefully life gets better. It has to.<br />
<br />
That's it for now. Goodnight.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-45451035636989814632016-07-12T20:32:00.004-07:002016-07-12T20:32:45.848-07:00Nostalgia My pain hits me sometimes, like a whip, it stings inside.<br />
<br />
I miss the old, the old familiar, the old nonsense and pointlessness. Everything unmeaningful. It's meaningful now.<br />
<br />
I miss the now, stuck in the then. The world screams light-waves but I can't hear.<br />
<br />
I miss the sound of your voice and of your laughter. I miss your smile. I miss the shenanigans and the dull but somehow exciting bar-talk we shared when the day was far away.<br />
<br />
Night owls. Passing souls. Strangers sharing a breath of time together, and it ends.<br />
<br />
I miss feeling nothing. That was something. Something special indeed.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-74381310771675458852016-06-26T20:25:00.000-07:002016-06-26T20:25:07.051-07:00Netflix Doc Reviews 4: The Fundamentals of Caring, Prescription Thugs, Being Ginger, Meet the Patels, Full Metal Jacket, Where was God?<u><b>1. The Fundamentals of Caring</b></u><br />
<br />
Okay, it was a film, not a doc. A Netflix original film, to be exact. But I wanted to share it because it featured a main character who was a jerk asshole teenage boy confined to a wheelchair. His new caregiver had to have a very intimate care-giving relationship with him. It was extremely well written, lighthearted, and thought-provoking. Everyone should watch it! 10/10<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>2. Prescription Thugs</b></u><br />
<br />
Umm, we have a different war than terror to fight in this country, and it's against opioids and amphetamines. Holy crap. I can't believe the creator of this film was allowed to exploit the pharmaceutical companies so freely. Bravo Netflix. I learned a lot. I also have more compassion now for people who rely on pills for pain or whatever. Former drug dealer Chris Bell is ballsy and he keeps it real. 8/10<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><u>3. Being Ginger </u></b><br />
<br />
Did I review this one before? I watched it back in January. Anyways, I guess there is racism against redheads in some parts of the world. It's acceptable racism, which is strange, as I've never thought of red hair as a thing that constituted much of a difference between another person and myself. I mean people die their hair purple and pink now. Are strawberry blonde highlights really a thing to fear? Apparently so. Strange film, although there is a cute love story tied in, as the redheaded director tries to find a girl who will go out with him. He is cute, but struggles immensely. 6/10<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>4.</b><b> Meet the Patels</b></u><br />
<br />
I watched this when I was going through my internet dating phase and meeting Indian men over a year ago. I became intrigued with their culture. The producer of Meet the Patels, an only child in an Indian family of 3, films his parents as they discuss their views of marriage and life. They are a very cute family, worthy of having a reality show. I'd like to see more footage of this family if Netflix has more in the future. The Indian dad was especially funny, and I actually felt when the documentary ended, that I'd lost a friend without being able to properly say good-bye. I must have this Indian dad in my life, at least cybernetically. 9/10<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>5. Full Metal Jacket</b></u><br />
<br />
Again, not a doc, but someone suggested I watch it, and let me tell you. The first 20 minutes terrorized me. I felt like I'd been to boot camp and war thrice over by the end of the film. It was an extremely disturbing psychological story of what a soldier goes through. 10/10<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>6. Where was God? Stories of Hope After the Storm</b></u> <br />
<br />
This was rather depressing, so I'd suggest watching this alone if you don't like getting emotional around others. It starts out kind of sad but then there are moments later on that pull your heart apart. It's about families torn apart by the Oklahoma tornado of 2013, which collapsed an entire school house. Anyways, it's not too graphic, and there are moments of the film showing how the tragedy brought a community closer together. 7/10Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-63424760937936564012016-06-26T14:31:00.001-07:002016-06-26T14:53:21.731-07:00Netflix Documentary Reviews 3: Holy Ghost, Dope, Furious Love, Fuller House: Season 1, Bob Ross: Season 1, My Beautiful Broken Brain, The Genius of Marian, Finding Vivian Maier, Janis: Little Girl Blue<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>1. Holy Ghost</b><br /> <br /> This documentary followed a former member
of heavy metal band Korn in his spiritual walk today. Mostly, he tells
people about Jesus and tries to pray for them. There were a couple of
other dudes praying and healing people, too. It really fascinated me,
but then I read one distinct negative review on Netflix (even though the
documentary had an overall 5/5 star rating), and it made me question
everything I just saw. I've posted the negative review below, and you
can watch the film and decide for yourself. 8/10<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
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<br /> <b>2. Dope</b><br /> <br />
A fun ghetto film. Not a documentary, but I needed to include it. It's
about a modern day black nerd, who dresses like Fresh Prince, but lives
in the ghetto. Imagine Will Smith, as a smart and responsible teenager,
growing up in the projects of West Phili. The film was well-directed and
scored, and fairly well written. I just liked the concept for the
character most of all. Though rated R, it seemed appropriate for the
whole family. 7/10<br /> <br /> <br /> <b>3. Furious Love</b><br /> <br /> This was kind of similar to Holy Ghost, but not quite as captivating, so I'll give it a 6/10. <br /> <br /> <br /> <b>4. Fuller House: Season 1</b><br /> <br />
Also not a documentary. But so epic I must review! Lots of
laugh-on-the-inside moments. Give it a few episodes, and you'll be
hooked for the season. I was surprised to see how well the roles of DJ
and Stephanie Tanner were played. Nothing was awkward. Not even the fake
audience laughter following Kimmy's dumb attempts at attention, though
she seems to have given up her crush on Uncle Jesse. She has a child,
and is recovering from years of drinking and drugging, so she's grown up
a bit, too. Rebecca and Jesse share some very wet kisses (that was as
close to awkward as it got), and of course, Jesse plays his "Forever"
song (yeah, that was pretty awkward) toward the end of the season. They
really hashed out a lot of old memories though, yet not many visual
flashbacks. Maybe they weren't allowed to use old footage for copyright
issues. "Michele" did not re-join the cast, and other characters make
comments about her disappearance, in one instance saying she can't join
them because she is too busy "running her fashion empire." 9/10<br /> <br /> <br /> <b>5. Bob Ross: Beauty is Everywhere, Season 1</b><br /> <br />
Wow this was a trip. Back in time, and out into nature. His paintings
really come to life in front of your eyes in like 20 minutes. It's so
amazing. Now kids can pause and play to prepare their palettes and
practice their brush strokes. If they're painting for real and not using
computer painting software. Ross often takes a moment talk about nature
and animals. On the first episode, he shows baby squirrels suckling
from a bottle, that he prepared for them after they lost their mother!
It was nuts! I wish I could own one of his paintings, really. That would
go on the bucket list for sure. 10/10<br /> <br /> <b>6. My Beautiful, Broken Brain</b><br /> <br />
This was a legit documentary. This girl had a stroke and lost the
ability to do certain things. She had to learn how to do basic things
all over again. It was scary (she was only 34!) and touching. 9/10<br /> <br /> <b>7. The Genius of Marian</b><br /> <br />
A son films his mother after she is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I felt
the film was too slow paced and boring, and it was poorly edited, and
also a little invasive and exploitative. But anyways. It's there on
Netflix. Maybe it could help somebody who is struggling with losing
someone they love to this disease. 6/10<br /> <br /> <b>8. Finding Vivian Maier</b><br /> <br />
This nanny whom everyone knew as always walking around with a big
camera around her neck, finally got exposed, long after her death. Her
pictures are so amazing, I must give this film a 10/10.<br /> <br /> <b>9. Janis: Little Girl Blue</b><br /> <br />
Such a sad story of Janis Joplin, but this film brings her back to
life, and humanizes her in a way no other media has. Great footage, and
some very intimate interview segments with Janis and those closest to
her. This is a story worth watching. 8/10Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-91661839661521523872016-05-09T05:44:00.003-07:002016-05-22T05:29:05.134-07:00A New Normal<div class="ccdasection">
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My thyroid levels are now
overactive. A combination of job stress and a new medication that has
increased electrical conductivity in my brain (Keppra) may be
responsible; But I also had a grand mal seizure last September that
seems to have rewired my brain and changed my whole body chemistry and
metabolism and even my personality, so I will need to await another
blood test (pending June 9 2016) to see if my thyroid/metabolic levels
have stabilized now that my PCP recently decreased my NDT Nature-Throid
from 130 mg to 65 mg. I've never had overactive thyroid levels in the
past, even on the highest dosages of Synthroid (before taking NDT) and
NDT. In fact, 130 mg is the highest dosage Nature-Throid makes, and it
has always been just enough to get me barely into normal thyroid
function range. But now for some bizarre reason, my thyroid metabolic
function is out of control. This is why I think the seizure may have
something to do with it.<br />
<br />
<span class="chartexportsectionheader">Bear in mind that my dad has
epilepsy, so it was easy for the hospital to diagnose me with epilepsy
after the September seizure. People don't have grand mal seizures from
hypothyroidism. However, hypothyroidism and epilepsy go hand in hand in
many case studies I've read over the years. Now I've become one of those
statistics. I always thought statistics were what happened to <i>other </i>people,
and that I could play my own physician and manage my own health,
primarily by reading about health and nutrition and staying in the know.
Nope. I need prescription drugs. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="chartexportsectionheader">I've been having anxiety, but can't take anxiety medication, because it interferes with the
seizure medication. My anxiety has contributed to a 30 lb weight loss this winter. I went from 138 to 108 between November and March. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="chartexportsectionheader">My brain is completely rewired
now. I've lost my sense of humor and my personality, at least what I
used to know it as. I've also lost some cognitive functions. The other
day upon waking up, I couldn't add six plus six. It took me about 10
seconds to add it with my fingers when I finally realized I couldn't do
it any other way. I've gone into sudden rages, emotional fits, panic
attacks, and sheer hysteria at the drop of a dime, sometimes for no
apparent reason. I cry everyday now.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="chartexportsectionheader">I wish someone would have caught
my head when I had my seizure. From what I was told, people around me just watched me
walk around blabbing verbal nonsense, until I started
bashing my head against the wall and floor, at which point someone dialed 911. I don't know how people can just sit
and watch someone break their brain and do nothing. No one in an office full of people even thought
to cradle my head. Maybe they were afraid. Afraid of the noises I was making,
and possibly of other things coming out of my body. I was more alone
that day in a room full of friends than I am now in a town full of
trees. </span><br />
<span class="chartexportsectionheader"><br /></span>
<span class="chartexportsectionheader">There's no going back now. No
going back to the normal I used to know.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="chartexportsectionheader">I did try to refuse the seizure medication for a couple months after being released from my 4 day hospital stay. I googled "Seizure Triggers" and decided I could avoid alcohol, stress, flashing lights, sunlight, and caffeine, and decrease my chances of having another seizure. However, I couldn't avoid other triggers, like food sensitivities (I think sugar and MSG are a couple), chemicals in dry erase markers and cleaners (which have made me pass out in the past), my period (hormonal imbalances), and missed medication (well, I was refusing to take medication), and I kept getting funny feelings, about once a
week, and I knew my head wasn't right. I didn't feel like myself. Within a couple months I noticed myself feeling detached and depressed and
eventually anxious and suicidal. I fainted a few times, and also woke up from seizures in my sleep. I decided to take a short medical leave from work between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and start taking the seizure medication. It made me extremely tired. I wasn't able to drive and I could barely go up and down the stairs in my apartment building. I was slurring my speech, and feeling nauseous when I ate. I became increasingly sensitive to sunlight, too. The future began to look as dim and bleak as the 4 pm. winter sunsets. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="chartexportsectionheader">My landlord was nervous about me living on the third floor. The walls were A-frame and it was hard to even stand up all the way in my room or the kitchen or bathroom. I'd hit my head several times while contorting my body to get into the shower, and he knew this. He's actually fixing the apartment now, at least that's what he told me after I moved out. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="chartexportsectionheader">He was Indian man #1, who I'd met
on Match.com a year earlier. He helped me out when I needed a place to stay, but it wasn't safe for me to be there any longer, and he and I both knew that.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="chartexportsectionheader">I'm home living with my parents
now, since I can't function like I used to. It isn't so bad, but I worry about how I'll ever redefine normal, or fit into any mold that society finds acceptable.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="chartexportsectionheader">My TSH reading was .02 after my blood-work drawn this April. It explained the
anxiety I was feeling, and the heart palpitations I was having this winter. M</span>y TSH reading in 2011
was over 400, which was indicative of a sluggish, under-active thyroid. I used to be very slow and dull. Non-emotional. Non-feeling. Non-caring. I liked me better that way. Nothing got to me.<br />
<br />
Now I'm on the other end of the spectrum, completely. It's uncharted territory for me, these waters, these feelings. I wish they'd go away.<br />
<br />
<span class="chartexportsectionheader">I've had a Murphy's law sort of
year this 2016, set into motion by banging my head 8 months ago. Makes me wonder if that's why heavy metal fans are so dumb. Our brains aren't meant to be shaken around. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="chartexportsectionheader">I saw a Reiki
energy healer lady last week. She lives and practices her healing art in Long Lake, NY. I don't
know that my parents approve, since my dad pastors a Christian church, and
this lady was into new age stuff, but whatev. I'm desperate to try
anything, I told myself. I'm sick of going to sleep wondering if I'll wake up in a cold pool of sweat, or wake up at all, or what kind of night terror I'll have. I've experienced such strangeness lately. Strange tastes and sensations in my mouth and in my mind, even a physical squishiness in my brain. I'm a writer and I have no words to really describe it. I've been drifting in and out of consciousness daily and nightly, hours and days meshing into one another like braided sets of ropes twisted into knots. I don't really
know who I am anymore.</span></div>
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<span class="chartexportsectionheader"><br /></span></div>
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<div class="ccdasection">
<span class="chartexportsectionheader">The Reiki energy healer lady was
amazing, though. She gave me hope. Told me in the beginning of our
meeting, not knowing anything about me other than my first name, and that I was pissed that her office was hard to find, that her hair was standing up all over her body, and that
"Spirit" told her I was supposed to be a ghost writer. I told her there
was no way I was into writing ghost stories. But then she explained what
ghost writing was, and what kind of money her ghost writer friend made
per book, and she seemed willing to help me with networking. So there's
that, maybe.</span></div>
<div class="ccdasection">
</div>
<div class="ccdasection">
<br />
<span class="chartexportsectionheader">She also talked to me about
energy spirals and something about the word tork or torque, I don't
know. I looked it up but it's all too Sheldon Cooper for me. Then she
had me lie down on a raised bed, placed some crystals by my head, and
covered me with something a soft as a mouse's belly. She began a dance,
which I could only imagine behind my closed eyelids, as she blew air
audibly all around the room and snapped her fingers at the air beside
me, circling my body, and sometimes lightly touching and talking to it.
She reminded me a couple times to breathe a certain way and to flex my
toes. I obeyed. Maybe it helped. Maybe it did something. Who knows. It
cost $95 so I hope so.</span></div>
Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-47225830465602643192016-03-04T15:23:00.001-08:002017-01-03T20:57:13.305-08:00The world is going to end<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm not a big Joyce Meyers fan but I went through a season in my life where I watched her shows all the time, and I remember one thing she said that stuck in my head. She said there are people who claim you can't believe in something you can't see. But we believe in gravity, and black holes, and fortune-telling the weather, because we see the evidence of their existence.<br />
<br />
The world is so screwed up! Up is down and left is right and good is bad and bad is AWESOME!<br />
<br />
I was at a music festival about 10 years ago and there was a table set up in the tent where people buy bongs and stuff and these dudes at one table were offering people 50 bucks to get a chip inserted into their finger. They were testing out tracking software in humans!! It scared me but other people were in line to get their fifty bucks.<br />
<br />
The government is trying to inject us and infiltrate our minds with all kinds of crap. People at this festival were too messed up to even probably remember having the chip implanted in them.<br />
<br />
So sad. I realize there are wild conspiracy theories out there. But the bible's predictions of the final days are happening right now. But people are deceived. And those people may think I'm deceived. In fact, I hope they're right, and I get to live a nice long happy life, but in case that doesn't happen, I want to know I shared what was on my heart with people while there was still time.<br />
<br />
I'm scared. I don't think it matters who the next president is. Nobody's gonna fix this country or this God-forsaken world. We are doomed.<br />
<br />
I'm part of the mess too. I buy clothes made by Asian slave children. I buy gas at Mobil sometimes, who is a sponsor of Planned Parenthood. I waste gas letting my car run for an hour some mornings when it's really cold, or just driving around for no reason, when people's heads have been chopped off in the name of oil.<br />
<br />
I spend money at McDonald's and put sheer crap in my body. Crap made by the young teenagers who work these jobs to buy themselves clothes and gasoline. Indentured servants worked for 7 years to own land. I worked hard in college for 6 years to rack up an $80,000 debt that with interest is over $100,000.<br />
<br />
I make barely $40,000/year, and a third of that goes to taxes, health insurance, union dues, and a couple other things. That leaves 28. Subtract 6 for rent and 6 for food/gas. That leaves me about $16,000 to try to save toward a $100,000 house and an $80,000 student loan. But then even that 16 disappears. I don't know where it goes really. Let me think.<br />
<br />
tithe/charity $5000 <br />
gifts for people $2000 <br />
impulsive clothes shopping $1000 <br />
meds/vitamins/herbs $1000 <br />
car insurance $600<br />
phone $600<br />
netflix $100<br />
<br />
Okay, so I guess I could be saving about $5,000 or so each year. Then I could maybe put a down payment on a house in 10 years, when I'm 45 and too old for any man to love me.<br />
<br />
But maybe if I have a nice house he will.<br />
<br />
I watched a documentary called Freedom to Fascism recently. It made me realize I was a deceived slave, tricked into thinking I'm free. But I'm not. I may as well go live in North Korea.<br />
<br />
I went through the drive through again yesterday and bought another sundae with extra hot fudge. It was late and dark and I should have gone to bed instead. What a loser I am. I just wanted it so bad I couldn't think straight. I ended up making an obnoxious effort to get it. In my mouth. Now. <br />
<br />
I digress. I haven't had another grand mal seizure since September. The seizure medication seems to be helping. Go figure. I was wrong about healing myself through nutrition and wishful thinking. I have this strange feeling like everything might start coming together soon. Maybe it's a 7 year cycle thing though. I'll turn 35 this August.<br />
<br />
My seizure medication was expensive when I started taking it - $144/month through Rite Aid. And that was the generic! Then I switched to Walmart and it was $75/month. Then I made some phone calls to my HR department and found out I was mistakenly never mailed my prescription coverage insurance card, good for CVS pharmacies only. Now I use CVS mail-order scripts and pay $15 every three months and the seizure meds are shipped to me. <br />
<br />
I'm considered an epileptic now. I was approved for free rides in a handicap van. Sunlight makes me dizzy so I'll have to start using that as the days get longer and brighter. I was told I wouldn't have to pay a fee. My blind friend Josh uses the same handicap van but it's not free for him. He has to pay $4 per stop. <br />
<br />
Yes, the world is going to end.<br />
<br />
I hate the word epilepsy. Instead of studying this unique gift I have to travel in and out of consciousness, they call it a disease and make me pay for medication to make it go away. <br />
<br />
My pastor here in RI cites research studies in his sermons sometimes that support what the bible teaches about how to live our lives and treat people. At my first AA meeting I was told that in order to overcome addiction, I had to believe in God.<br />
<br />
And it's in the big blue book an old man gave me at my first meeting, when I was 7 days sober from alcohol, probably for only the second time in my entire adult life. A lady sitting next to me pulled a gold coin out of her pocket, and slipped it into my hand. The coin said 24-hours-sober. When it was my turn to share, I was really honest with the group. I told them I wasn't really an alcoholic, but was there to watch and learn.<br />
<br />
Which I was and did.<br />
<br />
I never even decided to quit drinking. I just decided I might not want it anymore, when I woke up from a grand mal seizure last September. And I still haven't gotten a craving.<br />
<br />
I've gotten bored though, and that's dangerous. Blogging, sleeping, and cleaning incessantly have ironically kept me pretty sane. Having a full-time job helps, and part-time friends, and lots of alone time with Netflix and something I'll call Lilo. I'm not always looking happy. But I still have joy inside somehow. I'm more content on a bad day single than I ever was on a good day with my ex.<br />
<br />
I had to be alone with myself. I had to get to know me. Focus on my own flaws. Learn to be gentle on myself. Learn to love myself and treat my self with kindness. I think that's how I justify eating McDonald's sundaes sometimes. <br />
<br />
My RI pastor cited a research study that showed married couples who waited for marriage before having sex reported being happier overall after 20 years and again after 40 years of marriage, compared to couples who didn't wait for sex. The ones who waited also had a lower divorce rate.<br />
<br />
I haven't seen or dated anyone seriously in the past 5 years. It will be 5 years this April since I left my past life. And since then the remembrances I tried to cling onto. All gone now. I feel like I can breathe again.<br />
<br />
The guys I met on a dating website last Spring were all losers. Except one guy named Steve. He is the one who encouraged me to go to AA meetings when I decided to give up drinking. He must have known how hard it would be, even for the occasional social drinker.<br />
<br />
My landlord was the biggest loser of all. He finally installed a CO detector 2 weeks ago, though I started mentioning it almost a year ago. The old one kept beeping. I'm limited to a small space heater and a gas kitchen stove and the entire shared third floor wreaks of propane. I try to open windows sometimes but he checks on the house, since he pays the electric bill. He even walks into my room some days, maybe to check on his hidden cameras, I don't know. I'm creeped out though. I told him I'd be out by the end of June.<br />
<br />
Whatev. I needed a cheap place to move into fast last spring and he offered to help. Beggars can't be choosers.<br />
<br />
My 96 year old grandmother is still living with my parents temporarily while her frozen pipes problem is being fixed. They had to take out her entire dining room ceiling. I hope the carpenters moved all her nice rugs out of the construction zone and kept dust out of the other rooms by hanging up plastic over the doorways. I hope they aren't getting her nice hardwood floors all scraped up with salt that sticks to the bottom of work boots in winter.<br />
<br />
Grandma speaks highly of those handymen however. Grandma. She will probably outlive us all.<br />
<br />
<br />Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-68138040385860205212016-01-16T09:53:00.001-08:002016-06-26T14:28:01.501-07:00Netflix Documentary Reviews 2: On the Way to School, Dear Zachary, The Propaganda Game, The Tiger and the Munk, Jesus Camp, Kevin Hart Stand-up, How to Die in Oregon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<u><b>1. On the Way to School</b></u><br />
<br />
Kids from far-off countries walk 10-20 miles to school. They avoid elephants and tigers. A brave video camera man visits and follows along. Epic. 10/10<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>2. Dear Zachary</b></u><br />
<br />
A guy started making a documentary for his murdered friend's son. The documentary ended up becoming a mission to change the Canadian legal system which had a law that allowed convicted murderers to post bail and live freely until their court date, whilst postponing that court date several times. 6/10<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>3. The Propaganda Game</b></u><br />
<br />
North Korea is a wonderful place to live, according the people interviewed in this film. They believe the government takes good care of them, despite lacking some Western endorsed common amenities.<br />
<br />
They've been brainwashed. As we all have, to some degree, with government-pushed propaganda. But North Korea's government takes it a step further. <br />
<br />
They call themselves a democracy. Yet their past 3 leaders have a direct paternal lineage, more like a monarchy. Kind of like the Bushes maybe, if the Bushes were as smart as the Kims. <br />
<br />
The biggest difference I saw between North Koreans and Americans in this film, was people's attitude toward government. In the U.S. we are very split. We're becoming the dis-United States.<br />
<br />
But the dedication represented in this film of North Koreans to their leader was analogous. Children are taught in school from an early age to salute and chant about the greatness of their present and past leaders everyday.<br />
<br />
Sidenote: First came Kim Il-sung (placed in charge by the Soviet Union after WWII) and then Kim Jong-il (sung's son), and now Kim
Jong-un (sung's grandson). Kind of gives you a double chin to say <i>Jong</i> over and over again. Maybe if those people talked differently they wouldn't have such long faces.<br />
<br />
North Koreans are shown throughout the documentary screaming and crying when in the presence of their leader. It reminded me of how girls screamed and cried when they saw the Beatles.<br />
<br />
I'm reluctant to elaborate any further on my opinions of North Korea. 10/10<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>4. The Tiger and the Monk</b></u><br />
<br />
I got bored of this after 11 minutes. It was disappointing to me that I couldn't stick it out because it was only 50 minutes long. It was about monks and their pet tigers. 3/10<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>5. Jesus Camp</b></u><br />
<br />
Religious extremists in this documentary make Christianity look nuts. It disturbed me almost as much as "The True Cost."<br />
<br />
I felt bad for the children of these extreme evangelicals. This is not Christianity folks. This is just... wrong. True Christianity and a true understanding of Christianity comes from a church with a prepared pastor. Of all the churches I've been to in RI (probably 20), only one church had a prepared pastor who wasn't afraid to speak the truth. The pastor streams his sermons live and you can check out what real Christianity is all about here: <a href="http://gracecfellowship.org/">graceCfellowship.org</a><br />
<br />
But extreme evangelicals are different. In "Jesus Camp," children appeared to be demon possessed in some footage. It gave me chills to watch as adults subtly encouraged and praised children for shaking and crying in church.<br />
<br />
My understanding of Christianity is that the bible is the inspired, written word of God. It tells the ultimate love story, one of the shared love between a parent and his child, and what extreme natures that kind of love will drive a loving soul to do. <br />
<br />
In the end love is all that matters anyways. And God is love. He's not what the extremists in this film worship.<br />
<br />
This movie was a disgrace to Christianity. 5/10<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>6. Kevin Hart Stand-up 1, 2 and 3</b></u><br />
<br />
This wasn't really a documentary. I only watched the first one, most of it at least, entitled "I'm a Grown Little Man."<br />
<br />
I stopped it about 46 minutes in when I realized I wasn't in the mood for comedy. But it was funny, the story of his run-in with an ostrich, and his impersonation of said bird. He really is hilarious.<br />
<br />
He also had a good joke about his daughter yelling at him before she had developed a vocabulary. He interprets what she's saying through her toddler talk and body language. That shit is pure funny yo.<br />
<br />
Seriously though, it's January and life completely sucks. The only reason I searched Kevin Hart on Netflix (and none of his movies were available to stream) is because one of my middle school special ed students wrote an essay about wanting to spend a day with him. He wrote about funny scenes in his favorite Kevin Hart movies. I thought I'd check me out some Kevin Hart this weekend. And I'm glad I did. 7/10<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>7. How to Die in Oregon</b></u><br />
<br />
I was bawling in the first 5 minutes as they showed a home movie of a family sitting with their loved father/grandfather as he drank the "medicine" that would end his pain and suffering. He said good-bye. He wore a diaper and a button-down shirt. After he drank the "medicine" he said it tasted like wood. He laid down and sang a song and closed his eyes. Then the singing stopped, and his mouth opened wide. He let out an inaudible sigh. <br />
<br />
The rest of it I didn't really pay attention to. It started to get political. So I ate a sandwich and called an Indian guy I dated. He didn't answer. 9/10<br />
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<br />Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-35425578771163485972016-01-10T09:53:00.001-08:002016-06-26T14:27:25.304-07:00Netflix Documentary Reviews 1: The Drop Box, Love Me, The Dark Matter of Love, The True Cost, Craigslist Joe<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><u><b>The Drop Box </b></u></i><br />
<br />
The Drop Box is about a man in Seoul, South Korea who lets people drop off unwanted babies in a drop box he has attached to his house. He said God asked him to do it, after for several years, hundreds of babies were being abandoned on the streets of Seoul due to social circumstances that ultimately outcast women who had a baby out of wedlock.<br />
<br />
The social system is the problem. People don't value life over traditional values. In one scene it showed Korean news footage of babies being found in sewage pipes and garbage bins still crying, while others were left on streets and sidewalks to be walked and driven over. Many of these babies had their umbilical cords still attached.<br />
<br />
Pastor Jong-rak Lee and his wife have taken in many babies over the years, some of which are severely disabled. The film teaches a lesson on humanity. 10 out of 10.<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><i><b>Love Me</b></i></u><br />
<br />
Some ugly overweight loners try to buy themselves a wife from an online Ukrainian dating website. It was fascinating and horrifying at the same time. 9 out of 10. <br />
<br />
<br />
<u><i><b>The Dark Matter of Love</b></i></u><br />
<br />
Despite its creepy title, and equally creepy adoptive father's attempts at creating premature bonds with 3 adopted Russian children, this film was somewhat touching.<br />
<br />
It was about a married couple who had one biological child but were not able to have any more. When their one daughter was almost full grown, they adopted 3 Russian orphans: two young twin boys and a preteen girl.<br />
<br />
It was painful to watch the dad try to interact with the adoptees. He made them change their names against their will. It was awkward because one of the twin boys' names was changed to an American name that in Russian sounded like a bad word. But he had to take that new name. I almost turned the documentary off at that point.<br />
<br />
The mom looked like she was doped up on painkillers and muscle relaxers for most of the film. She just floated around the house, often hiding in bed during filming, as the dad did all the work.<br />
<br />
When she finally had to get out of the house one evening to go watch her adopted daughter perform a song at school, she completely ignored the girl afterwards and talked to other parents and teachers at the school instead. The adopted girl nearly cried for the first time in the whole movie. But even then, the adopted girl said to the film's producer, "I will never cry."<br />
<br />
I wanted to punch my computer screen out at that point. <br />
<br />
But I stuck it out. Maybe the editors of the film just sucked and intentionally wanted to create awkward tension for the viewer. I wished it had been filmed differently, though. I think the parents deep down were good people who wanted to share all their wealth with less privileged children. And they did.<br />
<br />
By the end of the doc, the kids did seem happier and well-adjusted. The adoptive parents were clearly loaded, but the film never explained how they had so much money. Maybe they won a big Powerball lottery. Neither parent worked. The dad would ride a tractor lawn mower around hundreds of acres of land that wasn't farmed, but served as what these Russian kids came to know as an American backyard. They'll probably be spoiled, rotten jerks a few years from now. Never knowing what love really is. At least not from this cardboard family.<br />
<br />
The end. 4 out of 10.<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><i><b>The True Cost</b></i></u><br />
<br />
I had this idea in my head a couple years ago that the true cost of putting gasoline in my car might be the blood of children. Oil wars. Bloodshed. Cheap gasoline for me.<br />
<br />
Oil is the leading bloodshed cost industry, but tonight I learned that the second highest human blood cost industry is the textile industry. Cotton. Clothing. Fashion. <br />
<br />
When we go shopping, if we're not buying something made in America, it's likely being hand-sewn by a third world slave. This documentary changed me. I kind of wish I hadn't watched it. I feel socially responsible for my consumer decisions now.<br />
<br />
The True Cost will open your eyes to the foolishness of the fashion industry. A handful of fashion world industry gurus are getting rich at the cost of keeping slavery very alive and well in third world nations.<br />
<br />
One woman at a clothing factory in Cambodia said she started a union with the other workers, and together they peacefully drew up and presented a list of factory conditions they wanted to see upheld, along with an increase in pay from $120 U.S./year to $160 U.S./year. <br />
<br />
These women had given up their children and were sleeping on wooden floors and breathing in harmful chemicals at work everyday. But the factory owners went into a little room to discuss what to do with the new worker demands. When they came out of the little room, they allegedly beat up all the women. They stabbed sewing needles through their bodies and bit them, too. It was horrible to read the sub-captions as this woman tearfully recalled that day she tried to enact change.<br />
<br />
I recommend you don't watch this if you're not ready to drastically change your shopping habits either. Some of the top companies who outsource slave labor include H&M, Walmart, and Levi's.<br />
<br />
I don't even like fashion that much but I cried myself to sleep as the film ended with footage taken from clothing store cameras on Black Friday here in our "free" country. Freedom comes at a cost. I'll have nightmares for life from having seen this. 5/10.<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><i><b>Craigslist Joe</b></i></u><br />
<br />
An average guy, Joe decides to videotape his road trip around the country with no money. He only has his phone and a computer, whereby he meets strangers on Craigslist. At one point during his travels, Joe actually meets the founder of Craigslist. The film explores the generosity of strangers who comprise the Craigslist community, particularly those who feed and house Joe and his cameraman during their 31 day adventure.<br />
<br />
My favorite part was when Joe meets a lady on Craigslist who had a small part in the movie Home Alone 2. Her name is Fran McGee, and she somewhat regrets what her life has become after her dream of becoming a famous movie star died. She is older now, and battles cancer now, using healthy food instead of surgery. She is also a hoarder but says her ability to see her hoarding behavior as insane makes her sane. "You have to be sane to see something you're doing as insane," she says. She has a great smile, too. A fresh spirit. A bared soul. She made me believe in the goodness of humankind for a minute.<br />
<br />
I'd give this film a 10/10. I almost gave it an 11, but I want to be a serious critic here. But I loved this documentary, co-produced by Zach Galifianakis who I also love, and I love the friends of mine who recommended it. Thank you.<br />
<br />
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<br />Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-22438982811022826692015-12-12T14:40:00.002-08:002016-05-13T07:43:34.434-07:00Break-up Poem<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>BP,</i><br />
<br />
Go find your dreamgirl. She's out there.<br />
<br />
But she's not me.<br />
<br />
She probably smells like candy, without having to use the chemical free Ava Anderson perfume I wear that is made from the oils of crushed flowers mixed with cinnamon.<br />
<br />
She is somewhat naive about the world, and needs your guidance on even small matters, but still works hard and supports herself, even if she's married to you.<br />
<br />
She's beautiful.<br />
<br />
She has big full lips.<br />
<br />
She skis, she golfs. <br />
<br />
She dances.<br />
<br />
I'm not her.<br />
<br />
My man will like me just the way I am.<br />
<br />
He'll love my tight little ass and my C-cups.<br />
<br />
He'll explore my body and count the freckles on my back instead of telling me that the Irish age poorly.<br />
<br />
He'll look more at me than he does in the mirror.<br />
<br />
He'll need to give me a kiss for no reason sometimes.<br />
<br />
He'll be honest. <br />
<br />
He won't care about materialistic things like clothes and cars.<br />
<br />
They don't define him.<br />
<br />
They aren't him.<br />
<br />
And he isn't you.Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-40540010972412758012015-12-07T09:15:00.003-08:002017-02-10T19:42:13.802-08:00A boring update on my health and non-existent love life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I took a two-week medical leave from work to go spend time with family while I starting a seizure medication called Keppra. It makes me feel tired and dizzy, in a cool spaced-out feeling sort of way.</div>
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I'm also having thyroid problems again. My thyroid levels were way off when I did my quarterly blood-work last month. I've taken natural desiccated thyroid hormones preserved from the thyroid glands of pigs for the
past two years and was doing just fine up until now. I think the seizure and/or seizure meds have interacted with my thyroid function.</div>
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I'm having restless nights of sleep, extreme fatigue, and hair loss (though not as much as when I was anemic a couple summers
ago after giving up beef).
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My doctor was concerned about my lab results and felt around for a lump on my thyroid, didn't say anything, and ordered a thyroid
ultrasound, which I'm having done next week. I'm guessing I might have a small goiter, since thyroid
goiters run in my family, on my mother's side. It would be a harmless
procedure to have it removed. I've been feeling my neck a lot lately, but it's so bumpy in general I can't tell what to feel for. But that was the least of my worries.</div>
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Right after my seizure happened in September, a coworker told me that medical leave would be covered by my employer. Long story short, I was misinformed. Last Friday morning I screamed like
Homer Simpson when I checked my online bank account and saw that my directly
deposited paycheck was missing a digit. And my next paycheck will be missing a digit as well. </div>
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And the kicker. I have to take Keppra - this synthetic mind-altering prescription drug that micromanages the electricity in my brain.</div>
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<br />
Why did things have to start going wrong? I was feeling so good and rejuvenated by the end of summer. I quit drinking in September. I got back into yoga in October. I was taking walks and jogs, getting along with my students, reconnecting with old friends. But I couldn't keep the ball rolling.</div>
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I dropped out of the college program I needed to keep one of my two teaching certifications active. My second teacher certification will expire in August. I'm 34 and have no idea what I'm going to do after this year. I could renew my second teacher certification and keep looking for an English teaching job, though there are more TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) jobs than plain old English teaching jobs these days.<br />
<br />
I've thought of relocating back to Manhattan and working in a publishing house, or becoming a yoga-certified instructor, since I have the nearly 200 hours of documented practice required. Maybe I'll meet a rich man who chooses me over the supermodels and wealthy business women he could otherwise be dating. Maybe I'll release my music album and the video that was made to Farmer John and people will like it. </div>
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I don't like this new medication Keppra. It's a huge horse-pill for one. I had to have a long hard talk with myself about taking it. One of the side effects is weight gain. Another is fatigue. And the list goes on. It's expensive, too. And my insurance doesn't cover prescriptions. I reflected on the Erin who once believed there was a natural cure for everything. </div>
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I even tracked down
a holistic doctor who practices German New Medicine and believes that
early childhood psychological conflicts trigger seizure disorders
(amongst some other diseases). She told me a seizure disorder is
triggered by seeing a lost limb. Incidentally, my dad had
his first seizure the day after witnessing his brother lose a finger
to a chainsaw.<br />
<br />
But at the end of this talk with myself, I
concluded that I needed to take whatever means necessary to eliminate
the chance of ever having another gran mal seizure at work, where I
could possibly soil my pants while convulsing and foaming at the
mouth in front of coworkers.</div>
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I don't recall ever
seeing someone lose a limb, but maybe after my dad suffered that psychological trauma, it left a marker in his DNA, and
was passed onto me. I'm just guessing though. I don't know really why
this is happening to my body.</div>
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I don't mind having
thyroid problems. I've come to terms, throughout my own research on my health, that my thyroid may need to be removed one of these days.
It's completely inactive in my body. I tried going off thyroid medication
2 years ago and within 6 weeks nearly lost the ability to speak. </div>
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In the olden
days, when people's thyroids didn't work, it was called Myxedema,
and it was characterized by the inability to pronounce words, along with fatigue and hair loss and feeling cold all the time and mental fogginess. In those days, my disorder would have gone untreated and I would have been labeled "dumb". </div>
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But thyroid
medication takes care of that for people these days. I've come to appreciate my WP Thyroid, which is more natural than the synthetic thyroid hormones I took in my late 20's, which were horrible. I was tired all the time and cold and confused. The WP Thyroid, though also a prescription drug, is actually the natural preserves of pig thyroid hormones. Pig thyroid hormones are nearly identical to human thyroid hormones.</div>
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Thyroid problems I can handle. I'm sure I'll sort out this little bump in the "throad" soon. </div>
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Brain problems are scarier though. My memory is a mess. It's become embarrassing. I tell
people I'm bad with names, and I lie about remembering things I
should remember, but don't.The other day I couldn't remember the word "idiom," even though I taught a short unit on idioms to my period 5 class last month.</div>
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I had a few fainting spells in my teen years but nothing of concern to my parents or I. Nothing I even visited a doctor or hospital for growing up. My first fainting spell happened in church while singing a song in front of the congregation. Kind of like when you go to a recital, and you see a couple kids drop like flies. Maybe from too much oxygen or something. This was what happened to me I think.</div>
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It didn't scare me back then. I kind of liked fainting. A total mental trip would occur in the seconds leading up to
my collapse, and when I'd awoken from what felt like an eternity-long
slumber, I was briefly born again into a world where, for a few seconds, I didn't know my name or whereabouts. Who are these people
around me? Am I naked?
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And one time I was,
because I fainted in the shower, and my parents busted into the
bathroom, my 16-year-old self never quite felt the same way
around them after that day. But my mother kindly lies and says they
didn't look behind the curtain.
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Another backup plan I read about was a special high fat, low-carb diet that seems to cure seizure disorders for some people. But I'd have to be on the diet forever. Eliminating carbs would be difficult for me, especially now that
I've given up on caring about what I look like naked. I'd rather undergo some hypnotherapy with the
holistic doctor to revisit traumatic childhood memories I've possibly suppressed, of arms and legs
falling off people.
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My two-week medical
leave was well spent though. I split my time equally between my sister and parents' houses. I
rested and watched How I Met Your Mother on Netflix at my sister's
house for the first week, and played with my parents' two new puppies at
their home for the second week. I watched TV with my 95 year old grandmother, too, since she fell and hurt her hip, and has since moved in with my parents.</div>
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"We're all falling apart. You know everyone has to die someday."</div>
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These were her words of encouragement to me. </div>
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The week spent with my sister was great. She lives out
in the woods in the middle of nowhere, atop a hill that overlooks
waterfalls. White bunnies live across the street in a wild patch
of land. She throws carrots into that overgrown field sometimes, feeling responsible for their lives in some small way. She owns a pit-bull mix of some
sort, who is friends with the bunnies. They even sometimes play together. </div>
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Her dog's name is Zoey and Zoey doesn't seem to understand that she's supposed to be a protective watch dog for Bethany. She should be baring her teeth, letting saliva gather grossly around her jowls, and growling at creepy bearded mountain men who pass by. </div>
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Zoey is too kind. She might not even realize she is a dog. She was left alone tied up in the woods somewhere for a lengthy period of her puppy-hood before a stranger found her and brought her into a
shelter. Bethany assumed a pit bull would be as effective as a home security system, and cheaper to boot, so she adopted her. </div>
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Bethany has a theory that Zoey was exposed to, and possibly raised by, deer and squirrels during her abandonment in the woods as a puppy. She pointed out how Zoey walks high on her
toes as if they were hooves. When she prances about the hardwood floors she sounds like a woman in high heels scrambling around before work. The click-clacks resonate throughout the house.
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“Either go lay
down or go bark at somebody! Be a dog! Stop walking around! What are
you doing with your life!?” Bethany yells.</div>
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When Zoey sleeps,
she stretches out her limbs and crosses each set of ankles, looking very graceful, like a deer.</div>
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While on her runner, Zoey frolics and leaps over imaginary obstacles. She's kind to the
wildlife. Squirrels eat their nuts beside her. Birds peruse the backyard foliage right alongside Zoey. And the bunnies hop on over sometimes to poop in Bethany's yard. Zoey eats up the poop pellets. </div>
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"Stop eating shit you little bitch!"</div>
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She takes out her aggression safely. My sister that is. Zoey has no aggression.</div>
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Bethany lets me
indulge in the solitude of her home while I'm her couch-ridden guest.
I feel like I'm in a late 19<sup>th</sup> century cure cottage. Bethany's town population is mostly made up of summer residents who own camps and trailers. The only sounds I hear are the low moans of the winter wind outside, and the
wood-stove crackling, and Zoey's click clacks, and occasionally Bethany
yelling at the dog or at some inanimate object in the house that isn't doing what it's supposed to.
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While I'm her guest, she keeps the
wood-stove burning, and sometimes I get so warm I
sweat profusely. I tell myself it's good to sweat out
toxins, since I can't exercise.
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Bethany dims the
lights each evening, and plays the bongos, sometimes chanting a
conglomeration of intonations laced with unpredictably placed syllabic accents. It sounds soothing, and mysterious, like a Native American prayer.
A speaking in tongues. A song with no words, and yet with so many.</div>
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She cooks me eggs and toast each morning, and pleads with me to take a walk with her each day. On the 3rd
and final day of my lodging, she encourages me to join her on a jog.
I try, but the muscles around my joints are too weak, and my knees
feel stiff. I stop after about a half mile, pain shooting up my right
knee. She finishes her spirited run and meets me on the way back. We
walk up the huge hill to her house together and say good-bye to
one another.</div>
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She won't hug me
because she says it seems weird to hug. I say fine, see you in a
couple weeks, and I leave.
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“Text me when you
get back home! Drive safe! I love you! You're the best sister anyone
could have!!”</div>
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Something like that,
and we have a bittersweet parting that only sisters growing old
together can understand.
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I'll see her again
at Christmas, I remind myself. It's sad to leave. I remember when we
watched season 4, episode 6 of How I Met Your Mother just a few days earlier, and how we gave each
other a knowing look when in the final moments of the show, Ted Mosby tells
his children, "Kids you may think your only choices are to
swallow your anger or throw it in someone's face, but there's a third
option. You can just let it go, and only when you do that is it
really gone, and you can move forward."</div>
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My sister and I are
moving forward. She's caring for me, taking me under her wing like a mother hen. Our past
fights, despite being very brutal, are farts in the wind.</div>
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Being home with family made me want to write. Maybe it was the boredom too. I can't really say exactly how. Inspiration doesn't always come when you call. </div>
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Letting go of anger. I don't really get angry. Though I pretend to be angry daily as a teacher. It's also therapeutic to yell sometimes. I've had more than a few screaming matches with unruly students and it's helped strengthen my diaphragm so I sing better. See God uses even my anger to improve my gift.<br />
<br />
More often than feeling angry I just feel sad. I hold onto sadness I suppose because it's the only thing I can feel sometimes. </div>
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I talked to one of
my Indian guy friends who I dated for a couple months last year. (I refer to him as Bandi in a past blog). He was the only one of a dozen Indians I met that I still talk to. Bandi and I are strictly platonic. He calls a few times a week, just
to talk, and I like that, and tonight on the phone he tells me his ex
wants to get back together with him. </div>
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"What did you tell her?!" I nervously ask.</div>
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He told her he didn't know. He doesn't know if he even wants to stay in Boston much longer. He's not happy. He doesn't know what he wants. He starts to pour his heart out to me. </div>
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"I can't imagine things ever going back to the way they were. I feel like something was
broken inside me," he says.</div>
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I tell him I know that feeling.
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I recite to him a
quote about love I heard before:</div>
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“There's lots of
love in this life, but never the same love twice.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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(Maybe he'll finally take the
hint and fall in love with me.)
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No he won't. We don't have much in common
to start. But we found each other 8 months ago on a dating website when we each really needed a friend more than anything else. I visit him in Boston once or twice a month, just to chat and go to the grocery store and run errands together. Sometimes we eat out, other times he cooks for me. When I sleep over on a weekend, I make quiche in the morning. We have a nice little routine, and a friendship with boundaries. We sleep together in his bed, and just hold hands. Nothing more, nothing
less. Like an old married couple. At least I like to pretend that's
what it's like. It's also like having a gay friend. Except he's not gay. He's just not that into me. But I might love him. So I let our friendship be. Just the way it is.</div>
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Now I sit here, finishing up my blog, and I've had two
full weeks to contemplate the meaninglessness of my life. I've sat
around and thought of the husband I'd never find and the kids I'd
never have and the songs I'd never write and the retirement I'd never
save. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Yet I'm not angry. </div>
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After binging on fast food and How I Met Your Mother for two weeks, I realize I'll probably never find love as long as I'm looking for it. May as well give up now. Throw in the workout towel and call it a day. Love will have to find me and accept me just the way I am. Even if I get fat. I'll have to believe there's some higher order working this all out. Some undiscovered law of the universe perhaps. A fine line between hopelessness and surrender that I haven't learned to walk.</div>
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Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-13871763476633405212015-11-08T08:34:00.000-08:002016-05-13T12:35:51.666-07:00Sugar<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I got angry during yoga practice yesterday. I hadn't been in a while and everything hurt like hell. I silently cursed my body and instructor as I <i>flowed</i> through the workout, occasionally dropping from high plank to cobra and taking extended child's poses.<br />
<br />
I'm hurting as I sit and type now.<br />
<br />
But it's a good hurt. One that tells me I'm a good person and I did a good job. It gives me permission to be lazy. It forgives me for recent harms past. This week, it was ordering McDonald's hot fudge sundaes. With extra hot fudge.<br />
<br />
I am addicted to sugar. Alcohol used to give me that fix. I liked margaritas and cosmos and mojitos and blue hurricanes and tornadoes and torpedoes - anything bright-colored and/or topped with an umbrella. But hold the cherry. Those are unhealthy.<br />
<br />
What a health-nut hypocrite I was. I will miss you, pineapple-raspberry-infused-vodkas at Mariner's Grill in Narragansett, and jalapeño margaritas at Tortilla Flats, and to-die-for-sangria at Circe on Weybosset.<br />
<br />
I need sugar. It fills a void in my life.<br />
<br />
A few weeks before I gave up alcohol, I took up coffee.<br />
<br />
It happened at an all-day teachers' professional development meeting the last week of August. I was staring at two big brown Dunkin Donuts Boxes O' Joe, repeatedly being poured away into my fellow co-workers' desperately draining cups and souls, and I thought, whatever this Joe has, I want it.<br />
<br />
It was too much for my digestive system though. I underwent a cleansing I'd never experienced in 34 years, even in the deepest throws of my 30-day juice fast. A few days later, I tried coffee again at McDonald's, and it was much less intestinally invasive. I've been a drive-through fanatic every day for the past two months now. One large hot coffee 5 cream. No sugar.<br />
<br />
My sugar cravings come at night, when there's nothing left in life to enjoy. I don't have a tv, can't watch Wheel of Fortune. I don't have a boyfriend to talk to or kids to cook for or a cat to kick.<br />
<br />
I try to avoid eating for the first couple hours I get home from work. I turn on my electric fireplace. I light a candle and eat a sandwich. I pick up the clothes scattered about from this morning's attempt to get dressed. I crack my knuckles and stretch my back and socially network and browse Netflix.<br />
<br />
But the tranquility of this rectangle room is insufficient. The fake flames and computer pixels only get me so close to happiness. Chocolate is calling. I imagine it melting in my mouth. This thought takes the cake. Once I've drooled over the notion of chocolate for even a moment, it's over. And I'm walking to Wholefoods around the corner, and raiding the chocolate section of the bakery.<br />
<br />
I've been mostly eating chocolate covered pretzels, about a half pound per day. And when that's not enough, I've been visiting McDonald's (in the same plaza) for a hot fudge sundae. What a loser I am. I tell myself it's okay. I'm not dating anyone right now. No one has to look at or smell me. I can detox later. I'm not having kids. I don't even think I'll ever have sex again. Unless I meet Mr. Right, which I'm told will happen when I'm least expecting it.<br />
<br />
I started season 1 of How I Met Your Mother recently, and when Bob Saget opens the narration of episode 15 with the story of how he met Victoria - the chick who baked cakes - he says he met her when he least expected it. He used that phrase. <i>Least expected it. </i><br />
<br />
People have been telling me the same thing for about 8 months now. Ever since I started online dating. Friends, coworkers, family... "It'll happen when you least expect it." And recently, the pastor at my church started preaching a series on christian marriage and dating, and he used the phrase last Sunday.<br />
<br />
So maybe I'm hearing this message for a reason. Maybe it really will happen. When I least expect it. When I've finally given up on love completely and I'm standing at the edge of this illusively hopeful bridge, overlooking a harsh sea of reality, and I assume my suicide jump, along he comes, in some sexy boat, and catches me.<br />
<br />
But for now the only thing keeping me happy is sugar. Sugar and shopping. I have a spending problem too. But it's arguably cheaper than therapy. If I didn't have insurance that covered therapy. So maybe not so arguable. But I therapeutically splurged on a nice down comforter from Cosco last week. I had to do it. It might be the closest thing to a warm body I'll have in my bed for the next few years.<br />
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<br />Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-20734107380541045902015-10-30T15:52:00.002-07:002016-05-13T18:27:14.929-07:00The art of small talk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When does being too brief with someone become rude?<br />
<br />
When is it rude to just keep on talking?<br />
<br />
One time in college a group of students were sharing out and I noticed one girl doing all the talking. She took up more time than her entire group was supposed to use collectively, by herself. The professor let her ramble. And on my anonymous peer assessment feedback form, I wrote, "Why does Julie (I think that was her real name) talk so much? Does she think what she has to say is more important than everyone else?"<br />
<br />
Some girls sitting close to me saw what I wrote and snickered with me as our feedback forms were collected by the professor. The following week the professor had typed up the comments, and my comment was edited.<br />
<br />
It said, "I wish the other members of (Julie's group) had spoken out more."<br />
<br />
To this day I wonder if that professor really saw it that way or wanted to teach whoever wrote that comment a lesson about how to communicate criticism tactfully. Maybe both.<br />
<br />
I notice it at AA meetings, too. I've been to 3 meetings so far. There's always a couple people who talk for about 10-15 minutes. And I had visions of telling them off at a future meeting, but decided against it. I'm really there to listen and learn about addiction, and make friends who don't drink, and feel a sense of fellowship. It's a nice group of people and you don't have to talk if you don't want to. I talked my first time but not since. I will though next time. I need to get my 30 day sober coin.<br />
<br />
With some people I think it's a nervous thing to talk too much. I talk too fast when I get nervous, and I've been longwinded before (moreso when I used to drink), but I'm pretty good at keeping conversations short most of the time.<br />
<br />
There's definitely a grey area. Like a huge grey lake everyone in a shared culture is supposed to go swimming in, but some refuse, and become the bystanders who want to manage the water or run away from it.<br />
<br />
My best teacher friend and I talk a few times a day. In fact, I've been going to work early so I can dump a load of my boring life details into her ears every morning before her day even begins. And she graciously listens.<br />
<br />
With other friends, I do more listening. Like with Fred, a retired jack of all trades and master of some. Fred is too smart for his own good. He knows he's smart, and he gets frustrated by the shortcomings of our human nature, including his own inability to quit smoking cigarettes after 50 years.<br />
<br />
His mind runs on, and sometimes his words do too, so last week I told him he needed to learn the art of small talk.<br />
<br />
We were talking on the phone for about 45 minutes or so and he said something really funny and I laughed really hard, and then I kind of thought, perfect time to end it. On a high note.<br />
<br />
But he did the opposite. My laughter had encouraged him. He tried to drag the conversation on and on. After another 20 minutes or so I got to thinking, this is too much. My arm's starting to hurt. I have to pee. I hope I don't get brain cancer.<br />
<br />
Even when there was nothing left to say, he continued on, the same stories, a few different words. I suddenly got angry.<br />
<br />
And that's when I told him he should end it on a high note. He seemed to understand, but probably in the same way he understands cigarettes to be bad for him.<br />
<br />
Fred's a musician and he's played with some great bands but at the end of the day he marches to the beat of his own drummer. There are no boundaries. He'd probably say he sees the boundaries but doesn't care. I don't think he sees them though. He doesn't see the big grey lake, either.<br />
<br />
Fred isn't even on the same planet as the lake. So that analogy doesn't really work.<br />
<br />
Fred is calling me, jeeze. He's been texting me all week about his anxiety over moving in with his girlfriend.<br />
<br />
I answer my phone and say hey. He says hi. He sounds sad.<br />
<br />
"She started getting on my ass about life and shit. Hah. Unbelievable. It's making my stomach turn. I'm trying to be silent. What a mistake."<br />
<br />
"Oh" I said.<br />
<br />
"Last night she said she wanted to start a life with me. I wanted to jump out the frickin window."<br />
<br />
"You two should take walks together. Get out of the house. Get some fresh air."<br />
<br />
"I can't get her out of the house. She doesn't want to walk any further than the house to the car. And that's usually just to go get something to eat and bring it home."<br />
<br />
He says some things I probably shouldn't share, and then goes on about the stress of having his belongings spread out between his last residence, a storage unit, a motor-home, and his girlfriend's loft.<br />
<br />
Since he lost his home in 2007 this has been his life. I have a song lyric about my life being scattered into bags. Fred's life is scattered into plastic bins and storage units, and people's back yards and friends' and family's basements and garages. Lots of treasures confined to dark, dusty existences. Vintage decor and antique glass bottles and artwork and tools. Poor Fred. Especially the tools. A man needs a place for his tools like a woman needs a closet.<br />
<br />
Two things Fred kept close all these years were his keyboards. He's supposed to set them up in my classroom this weekend so he can play for my students Monday. He's going to be a guest presenter to my classes. But he's worried the keyboards are behind a pile of big things in his motorhome.<br />
<br />
"They're buried, man. Don't even know if I can find them in that mess. I musta been Hitler. This is my last trip. I've suffered. I've paid, man. And that mattress I was saving for you? I moved it here, thinking it would be good to do that. What a dumbass I am. It got all dusty and dirty on one side when I lugged it in. Everything's a mess. It's over."<br />
<br />
(There's a moment of silence. I think I've heard enough. And I really wanted that mattress. And he better find his keyboards. But I don't say anything.)<br />
<br />
"Nothing's selling. All I sold this week was the 15'' PA bottoms. And I got nothing. Just about 100 for the pair. What a drag."<br />
<br />
(I hope he doesn't hear me typing.)<br />
<br />
He says his girlfriend wanted to talk about death metal and pitbulls and fast cars last night.<br />
<br />
"Oh my gosh so boring," I said.<br />
<br />
He tells me about a fridge and some tools and his motorhome engine he's trying to sell on Craigslist.<br />
<br />
"I'll list 'em. Throw some pictures up. Maybe they'll disappear."<br />
<br />
"You never know," I say.<br />
<br />
Fred winds up the conversation and lets me go. That was better.<br />
<br />
I'm spending my Friday night with a spinach cheese croissant, chocolate covered pretzels, and pumpkin pie soda (thank you Wholefoods, right around the corner, for making me fatter than ever).<br />
<br />
But I don't care. I'm done dating. I threw away the D and picked up an E. The dark chocolate covered pretzels don't care how I look in a thong. And they taste good.<br />
<br />
It's the day before Halloween and I went to work dressed up as a pregnant woman carrying a fetus-eating zombie baby, partially just to let my belly hang out. It was glorious.<br />
<br />
I ordered a DNA test online. I spit in a tube and mailed my saliva to a company. I'll find out my ethnic breakdown any day now.<br />
<br />
If I'm a certain percentage Native American I may have legal rights to land. Fingers crossed.<br />
<br />
It would be cool if I'm part Indian or Chinese.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In other news I'm still broke and living in my one room apartment. I'm playing my keyboard. Writing my blog. Reading my AA book. Calling my mother. Rearranging my room. And sometimes watering my plant when it looks yellow.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1198141325462846587.post-82179498186161975422015-06-28T09:48:00.000-07:002017-02-06T04:56:34.440-08:00First Year ESL Teacher in an Inner-City High School - Period 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I haven't blogged in 3 months. Life has been so busy. I don't even know what I feel.<br />
<br />
Lots of emotions to process this summer. Namely, being a first year teacher in an inner-city high school.<br />
<br />
I did a good job. Despite what the first two weeks looked like. Period 2 was my most challenging but also most rewarding, and period 3 was a piece of cake. But my period 1 class was particularly special. What an amazing group. I started the year doubtful that I could make it work. Very few students had even a basic grasp of conversational English. I was not certified to teach English as a second language. But one of my gifts is stubborn pride and another, a heavy heart, the marriage of which made this group of students and I come together and work out in the end. These kids - every one of them - learned to speak English by the year's end.<br />
<br />
More than 50% of my students even came to learn how to write a basic paragraph with few spelling or grammatical errors. This may not sound like a huge feat for secondary levels students, but for ESL students, it was. <br />
<br />
My coworkers and I bonded quickly. There were four of us on the ESL team, all female, and I was the only teacher with previous teaching experience, although neither of us had taught ESL. We were all wading in new waters together. We shared ideas and developed a curriculum since there was none to go on. We had no teacher leader like other departments in the building had. We had no support, and leaned on one another, often tearfully, and just had to put our best foot forward day in and day out.<br />
<br />
My period 1 was comprised of 19 students, all of whom spoke Spanish. Whole group discussions were difficult at first, as some students could not comprehend my pace of speech. Others could, and would bore if I slowed my pace. I found differentiation to be challenging.<br />
<br />
Most of my students were not self-directed so small groups were not containable. When I did structure small group activities, and even when they were structured well, students often resorted to socializing in Spanish. I spent most of the first academic quarter exhausting these models of instruction that typically work in mainstream Western education before my team and I discussed trying something new.<br />
<br />
By the second quarter, two of my Period 1 students dropped out. I was heartbroken, and felt I had failed them. However, this motivated me to work longer evenings, lesson planning into the next day or two. I began chunking my 90 minute lessons into short mini-activities that fell into routines.<br />
<br />
One of these activities was a word scramble. I projected a scrambled 7 letter word on the board and asked students to find as many English words within that scrambled word as they could in 3 minutes. Students could work alone or in pairs and turn in a sheet of paper when time was up.<br />
<br />
I found that competition and short tasks motivated students to focus more. I also had a daily activity where students' names were written on popsicle sticks. Each student would pull a popsicle stick from a cup and announce the student's name and read a daily question posted on the board - asking that student the question. The other student would then have to answer that question, then pick a popsicle themselves and ask another student the same question. This would go on until each student had asked and answered the question of the day. It was a good conversational activity and taught students how to have conversations in English. It also gave students time to think about their answer in advance while waiting their turn to be called on, and it gave students an opportunity to get to know one another.<br />
<br />
I allotted time for doing workbook pages, reading plays, and working on projects during my chunking of lesson plans also. But I never chunked more than 10-15 minutes for one activity. If I did, I knew students would divulge in an off-topic conversation. When students did work in groups, I came around with a red pen and grade book, and marked a check or check plus or check minus by their name depending on whether the student was on task. Doing so kept students on task. It was amazing what power that red pen and grade book had when I walked around with each in hand. <br />
<br />
I never had to yell at my period 1 class. In my other classes I did raise my voice often. But period 1, never. One boy, Hector, would urge me to get angry sometimes because he craved order and discipline, so I would cater to his demands but the class would not take me too seriously. They knew I was too caring to get angry. But one day during the second quarter I did yell at the class in Spanish (I minored in Spanish in college and my students did not know I spoke the language at all until this very day). Hector got very excited. He clapped his hands uncontrollably and said "yeah, yeah!" when I got going on my angry Spanish teacher rant. My anger was being encouraged and reinforced by other students as well! They joined in and yelled at each other in Spanish. Finally the room grew gloriously silent. The rest of the year I had a newfound respect from this class I never dreamed possible. Students included me in handshakes at the door and other greetings. I think some even bowed at me when entering the classroom, unless I am imagining this, but I think not.<br />
<br />
I dabbled in future Spanglish rhetoric when I became frustruated with students using cell phones. It was a recurring battle teachers had. "Diablo!" I once said. "Porque you have telefono and you know tienes free time later! Despues! Put it away! I don't want to see it! I will call su mama! You will fail este clase! Try taking this class again este verano. Verano clase! Comprendes? Ay, coño."<br />
<br />
A student SnapChatted my humorous outburst this particular day with their phone without me knowing and throughout the rest of the day several other high school students I didn't even teach were high five'ing me in the hallways and telling me, "You tell 'em Miss, You call they mama."<br />
<br />
Ninety minutes is a long time to spend conversing with a roomful of people who do not speak the same language as yourself. That was my true challenge of the year. Teaching was secondary to that. Classroom management, third. <br />
<br />
During the third quarter, on a cold winter day, a new student arrived to my class. He was tall and thin and took a seat in the front center aisle chair. He sat perfectly erect, eager to learn. He was Iraqi. His family had fled the war, and come to Providence, RI, and he probably had high expectations of an American classroom. I worried when I learned he spoke Arabic. Everybody else spoke Spanish. I worried about whether my Period 1 students would accept him into this tight, close, dysfunctional family we had established over the previous 4 months.<br />
<br />
On the very next day, I translated the popsicle stick question into not just Spanish, but Arabic also. I asked my Iraqi student to read the question to the class in his language. The Hispanic students were fascinated with seeing the Arabic script on my PowerPoint board, hearing him speak the language, and learning the notion of reading <i>backwards</i>.<br />
<br />
On the third day of the Iraqi student's attendance, my students started to ask him to write their names in Arabic. We ended up making a poster for the classroom with each student's name written in Arabic. <br />
<br />
The Iraqi boy was quickly embraced by my Period 1 class. It made me feel very warm and fuzzy inside, like somehow I had some part in creating a classroom environment receptive to being friendly and inclusive. <br />
<br />
Once a week I would hand out a twenty dollar bill to an exceptional student - someone who was still paying attention when the rest of the class had lost interest in my lesson. This was my selfless gift, and act of giving back to my students for the many gifts they gave me each day I had the joy of teaching them.<br />
<br />
I also asked trivia questions as part of my lesson planning. They would be interesting questions, and sometimes I'd give a prize like a free homework pass or bonus points on an upcoming test or quiz. But on one very special day I asked, "How many words do you think are in the English language" and to the person whose guess was closest to the correct answer, I gave $20. When we guessed at how many English words there were, they all got a little side-lesson in saying their numbers, too. I turned the trivia question into a lesson on numbers vocabulary. We differentiated the phonics in saying the "th" sound in "thousand vs the "the" sound in "there," for example. The "th" sound makes 2 different sounds and students didn't know that before.<br />
<br />
"Stick your tongue in your teeth like this and blow. (I made th sound)."<br />
<br />
"Notice the difference between the 'th' sound in the words <i>thick</i> and <i>thin</i> with <i>this</i> and <i>that</i>."<br />
<br />
"Say it. Thick Thin. This That. Stick your tongue out. Not your whole tongue. Anthony that's inappropriate. Nope try again." We had fun sticking out our tongues and practicing our sounds.<br />
<br />
Our daily lessons tended to be spontaneous like this. I had a word of the day everyday to practice pronouncing. We clapped out the syllables. We practiced spelling it and saying the letters. We acted out the word, used the word in a sentence, drew a picture of the word when possible... and then sometimes if the word had a blended sound in it, such as "sm" or "pr" I'd tell the class to fill the board with other words with the same two letters together in them. Students came up to the board, alone or in pairs and grabbed a marker and got busy. They earned participation credit this way which was 20% of their report card grade.<br />
<br />
Kids grabbed dictionaries and explored posters in the room for words to shout out. There were never any prizes for this activity, but I motivated them. I would tell them, "Once this board is full of words, I'll give you 5 minutes of free time." They would go nuts shouting out words for me to write on that board. And it always killed a good 15 minutes or so of class.<br />
<br />
Sometimes I gave out raffle tickets which could be turned in for points on exams. Raffle tickets could be earned spontaneously through good behavior, answering a trivia question correctly, being the first person to arrive at class, and so on. <br />
<br />
Period 1 gave me memories I will surely take to the grave. One student in that class, a girl, I came to call <i>mi hija</i>, which means my daughter. I came to love her as if she were my own. At the end of the school year, not knowing if I'd be back to see her again, I prepared a message and told her this:<br />
<br />
<span data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.$end:0:$text0:0">"Tu eres mi hermosa hija, aunque no te tube en la barriga pero si e tengo en el corazon."</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.$end:0:$text0:0">Translated, it means you are my daughter not grown in my belly but in my heart. </span></span></span></span><br />
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<span data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.$end:0:$text0:0"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<span data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.$end:0:$text0:0"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<span data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.$end:0:$text0:0"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<span data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".3y.1:4:1:$comment661240180677351_661374050663964:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1.$comment-body.0.$end:0:$text0:0"><br /></span></span></span></span>
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<br />Erin's Diaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04396272261637985234noreply@blogger.com1