The Berklee School of Music Singer/Songwriter, part 6

"Aspiring memoirist" doesn't do a damn bit of good without any actual effort on my part. And I don't have a job right now, so what the hell am I doing? I've been scattered. Trying to start a business doing way too many things. Performing, voice lessons, tutoring, photography, editing/proofreading, publicity...and not making a cent yet.

I was just laying here on my fiancé's bed in his bedroom at his parents' house while he plays Ben Folds on his keyboard, and tears came to my eyes. "This is what I've come to...I don't recognize my life any more."

The life I recognized was with my dysfunctional family growing up, and my fervent educational pursuits as my escape. Then I recognized being in love with an alcoholic, who made me laugh and kept me up all night long, telling me stories, but with whom I also fought belligerently. Then, I recognized being a mother. All that other crap that came before...blech. But that last thing...that was what life was worth living for.

I wasn't a bad one, either. I use to take my son out every day to mommy-and-me classes, the ones where you sit around a circle with a bunch of other mothers (and a few fathers) with their babies and toddlers to sing songs for half an hour until you took your kid(s) out to the playground for a couple more hours. Those were the days of glory, where in my memory the sun shines bright like the mythical gate of some holy place and bounces off the glittering sand that I would scoop into buckets for my little guy to pour out all over the toys in the sandbox. Real-life toddler heaven, it was. Of course, home was hell. But, as they say...better the Devil you know. (Not really...I'm not being sarcastic or cynical at all in this post.)

These days, my son is four - five in August - and I only see him on weekends, sometimes only every other weekend. Any time his dad asks if he can keep him again "this" weekend, I act like I'm hurt, or sad, or pissed, or I react in some way that hides the fact that deep down I'm relieved as hell to be left to my own selfish, albeit failing pursuits. When I do get my son - when I'm not offered an "out" - I try my best to act like a mother for a couple of days until I "get" to drop him back off with the guy I never thought would be a fitter parent than I. But so it is.

So, yeah. I don't recognize my life. Somehow I'm actually worse a mother than my own was. She didn't pay much attention to us, but she was there, physically. Behind a closed door most of the time, but she was just a knock away.

No, what I've become is my father. Like his, my dedication is to an other on whom I place monumental significance, an other who isn't the parent of my child but who satisfies my need for "love" in a way only a "significant other" can. And I don't have to do all that much to take care of him, except be with him...all the time.

I stood by him during his pyschotic break last week after he'd decided to stop taking all his bipolar/anxiety/OCD/sleep/etc. meds (that's what all the stretching was, a couple posts ago, a precursor to absolute unrecognizable madness that I can't even begin to describe at the moment). Sure, he "loves" me more than anyone has since my husband, #1, and #20 (the other two boyfriends who at least said they loved me). But, I remember when I left my husband, and, when it didn't work with #1, I "knew" that "love just doesn't conquer all" (and that's why I settled with #20 for awhile, because I didn't love him, at all - but my son did, and that's the only reason it lasted as long as it did, until I just couldn't do it any more).

I'm not sure why I've put myself in this position again. I put "loves" in quotations marks, knowing full well that the true word that belongs in its place is "needs". I'm with someone who would completely lose it if I left him. (Hey, that's a song..."As long as he needs me...I know where I must be...I'll hang on steadfastly...as long as he needs me." It's from the musical Oliver! and so says Wikipedia, "It is a love ballad expressing Nancy's love for her criminal boyfriend Bill Sikes, despite his mistreatment of her.")

As a matter of fact, Jason's mental breakdown came on the heels of me packing up because I wanted to go home, just for a night or two, to get away from his all-night manic cleaning episodes. There was shit all over his room, and he was up day and night bringing more shit into it from all over the house, obsessively. Yes, it was part of his disorder gone haywire, and somewhat beyond his control (although, did I mention he's decided to stop seeing his psychiatrist, and just smoke weed from now on?). A good fiancée would stand by her man in his time of need, I guess. But not I. I had tried to get away at least three other times over the course of the week, but he begged me to stay each time. So I did, reluctantly. And so here I still am...miserable.

I just want to get back to my life. I want to open my mail. I want to clean my own room. I want to take care of my cats, instead of just buying bags of catfood and dropping them off for my aunt, with whom I (used to) live. Not only that, I want to pet my cats. And I want to have space, alone time. I want to write my memoir. This blog is just a gathering of ideas. I want to write the real thing. This isn't it. This blog is like a little girl's diary, really. It's just...there's been so much wreckage in the present that it's been hard to just write about the wreckage of the past. It started with Margaret's suicide. Then I dated again - damnit - and that's the irony - this blog was supposed to prevent me from creating any more present wreckage. At least, that was the idea, if you go back and read my first post. I keep acting like getting engaged to be married is the ultimate redemption. I find Jesus, get baptized, start dating a guy in church, have a slip and kiss someone else, so ooh, I know, I'll ask the guy I'm dating to marry me, that'll fix everything - game, set, match!

It's all wrong. I feel like a prisoner. Getting engaged to someone just so he'll "know" you aren't going to leave him and he'll therefore hopefully "let" you leave his house, without freaking the fuck out, is clearly - how shall I put it? - fucking dumb.

I should have been writing throughout the course of our relationship so I could have gotten honest with myself. I was on a roll before this one. I over-analyzed the shit out of the last guy I dated (#29).

(And sorry, I just have to take a moment to laugh about Jesus being #28. A lot of good that did me, lol.)

(Oh! PS, #29 just got married, actually. I saw it on facebook. I wouldn't have been happy with that one, either, so I'm glad it was someone else and not me.)

"Love" - I've made such a joke of the word that I can't even take it seriously any more. And yet I say "I love you so much" every day to...what's the fake name I assigned #30? Oh, Jason, I think. But when I say "I love you" to him, what I mean is, "I don't want you to freak out if I don't say it back, so I'm going to say it back and act like I believe it, so that maybe you believe it, too."

But then...when I'm away from him - when I do GET to go home - first, I feel utter bliss. But then I feel so alone that I can hardly bear it. Even with my son with me at my house, I feel empty. Like something's missing.

I guess that's that "need" again. It's apropos to say that Jason and I "need" each other.

But my son needs me, too, and that one doesn't belong in quotation marks. I'm sorry, but I need to get my shit together. Watching Californication has changed my life. I just finished Season 3. Hank Moody is a better father than I am mother, a better writer than I, too, and, he fucks a shitload of women...which makes me not feel so bad. But it's not cool what he does, and he's has frequent downfalls. His daughter is currently pissed at him, in the episodes I'm watching, for sleeping with her 16 year-old almost-step-sister. But he didn't know she was 16, and he's got a good lawyer that he's fucking, so it'll probably all turn out fine (sarcasm).

Any way, Hank is a fictional construct. But...watching him fuck so many women and and still pick his daughter up from school and out for ice cream makes me feel like a total shitbag. I haven't even fucked that many guys - many of the guys on my list, atleast #20 and forward, are guys with whom I was legitimately trying to get into the relationship to end all relationships.

But it's still fucking lame, putting relationships with men above being a mother to my now four-and-a-half year old boy. This past weekend my son told Jason he hated him, and told me that Daddy loves him more than I do, because Daddy takes more responsibility for him. Those were pretty much his exact words. I hate to say that the kid is right. After four rehabs, his dad is finally doing really well. I'm the fuck-up now. I'm sober, sure, but that hardly means shit any more. I'm not going to go drink or use, because that would make this whole thing so much worse, and there's no need for that. But I wish I could. And why wouldn't he hate Jason? I give Jason way more attention than I give to my son. Goddamnit.

I'm still holding onto the hope that I can get my act together. I started the outline for my memoir. I still don't know if I should write it as a novel, or, "truly". I feel like I'd be completely damning myself in every circle of which I am a part if I write it as a true story. But maybe that's what I deserve.

But I'm not thinking of that yet. What I'm doing now is, I'm just writing facts. I'm writing a summary of things I've done and putting them into little chapters to be expanded upon later. Not how I felt, or what I thought. (For the record, I know that's a sentence fragment, I just don't care. And know that's a comma splice. Again, I don't care.)

In my outline, there are no motives. No self-justifications or rationalizations or painting pictures of people that make me look like the victim (because I'm pretty sure I've done a shitload of that). There's no answer to "why". What is, just is.

Jason was saying, as we were watching the show together, "Poor Hank. He just gets shit on, all the time."

"No. I don't agree with that," I said. "He does it to himself. He can't just fuck everything that has a vagina and a pulse and not expect his daughter and her mom to just be cool with it. It's not about him, in the end. It's about them."

"No, it is about him," Jason argued. Jason doesn't know how much I identify with Hank. I was crying today at Albertson's and Jason asked me what was wrong. "If I told you, it would probably end our relationship."

"I'll never stop loving you, sweetheart. Nothing's that bad," he said.

I still couldn't tell him. I couldn't say, "Do you know you're number 29 (not counting Jesus) in a long line of guys I've been with in some capacity since I left my husband? Do you know I don't even truly know if I love you or if I'm just with you to numb my pain? I don't even know if I'm capable of loving anything. I don't even love myself."

Cheating on him and breaking up with him in the beginning didn't work. So I'm not going there again. But I'm in fucking deep, here. We go to the same church; the pastor announced our engagement to the whole congregation a few weeks ago, at both the 9 am and 10:45 am services.

So now what?

"I believe in you, baby," he just said to me. He knows I'm writing, but he doesn't really know what about. I did tell him I'm writing my memoir. I told him earlier, at Albertson's, that he may not love me so much when I'm done.

The truth will set you free, they say. We'll see.

The Berklee School of Music Singer/Songwriter

So, it's been determined that I am, in fact, insane, but to what extent hasn't yet been decided by my therapist.

While trudging through the Dark Night of the Soul this past month, I finally decided to go ahead and make a damn appointment. I hadn't seen my therapist in over a year. I called every day from this past Tuesday to this past Friday, trying to get the appointment. I was being persistent because I was being told that she (my therapist) would call me back, and each day I was falling deeper and deeper into a sort of depression that I'd forgotten could exist, and she wasn't calling me back. Thankfully, she did, finally, and was even able to have a phone session with me on Saturday. The session consisted of me talking for an hour, catching her up on the past year, and her talking for 15 minutes, suggesting a couple things for me to do, as well as setting up another appointment for Wednesday (yesterday). And yesterday she set up appointments for Mondays and Wednesdays, based on my apparently tragic condition, so she can see me twice a week and try to figure out what the hell is going on that makes me want to do absolutely nothing.

I've heard about people seeing the world in shades of gray. About not wanting to get out of bed in the morning, or do anything, or go anywhere, or talk to anyone. I missed four days of work and my world was the color of feces. I just didn't want to be in it any more. No matter where I was, it just wasn't where I wanted to be. Nothing in the world was good - not even being with my son, which is the thing that's saved me so many times before. I even freaking got baptized. But it only got worse.

Today's finally sort of a little okay. I'm missing work again (my boss is sick, so there isn't anything for me to do there any way since they took all my responsibilities away saying that I'm over-qualified and that now I need to train my boss so he knows how to do his own damn job since I'm going to be graduating from school at some point and will move onto bigger and "better" - not 20 hrs/week $10/hour - things). My work situation has contributed to my depression a lot, for sure. They just made me stop doing all the things I do because I'm so much better at doing them than my boss is, and instead of letting me do them, they want me to show him how to do them, because don'tcha know, I'm a "temporary" employee, and since they can't afford to really actually hire me, they're gonna keep paying me less than this guy who I'm training. Yeah, it's depressing, all right.

Of course, you know that's not the only thing getting me down. Ahh...what we're all here for...relationships. This blog began as a relationship inventory. Relationships just haven't gone too well for me, understatedly -- namely, relationships with my parents and their significant others, relationships with my other family members, work relationships, relationships with "friends", the relationship with my husband, relationships with all the men I've somehow managed not to be successful at not getting involved with...these have all driven me completely insane, apparently (and well, again, the therapist and my doctor are going to decide the level of my insanity).

When I last posted, I had gotten back into a relationship with the boyfriend I'd left my husband for (the boyfriend with whom I'd broken up over and over in order to be with other men who'd wanted to be with me, before going back to him over and over when it didn't work out with those men - for two years - until he took off to Canada in September for three months and I finally had to face these demons without him).

I like to rewind and recap: So this boyfriend's name is Evan (#1) (and not his real name, of course). Those other men I just talked about are #2 through #26 (DAMN). After Evan left to Canada in September, I went and dated and had sex with a guy I'd pined over for like a year, who, afterwards, told me he had herpes (#27). I considered that a good enough rock bottom to want to really be done with men (and what choice did I have, I thought, if I might have contracted an STD?). I told my friend Margaret about it and she started taking me to meetings for sex and love addicts. Margaret's boyfriend was cheating on her, she thought, and he didn't want to be with her any more; she was so torn up that she decided she might be a love addict and thought 12-step programs would help her. They didn't (she didn't really try, IMO). After Margaret committed suicide (I had completed 42 successful days of "no men" and was going for 90), I ran into a guy who'd composed music for a video about suicide. When I talked to him about my experience with Margaret, he asked for my number, asked me out on a date, and we had sex even though I didn't want to. He was #29 (I'm counting Jesus as #28).

So, I went back to "Day 0". I've still been going to meetings, but I just haven't been able to get back to the whole "no men" thing. I haven't been able to put even one day together without some kind of pursuit of them (or at least without responding to them favorably). Margaret's death flipped me completely upside down; she was the one who was helping me with this "guy stuff"...or maybe I should say her death just put me back where I was. It was helping me to write about it...but once she died, I didn't even have the desire to do that any more, and it's been hard to get back to this inventory stuff.

I managed to stop seeing the suicide video/satellite communications engineer guy, but then Evan came back from Canada in December and asked me to the movies. I accepted, because that's what I do. But after a couple weeks I remembered, again, that I don't like him that much, and, more importantly, I don't like how unmanageable my life gets in my "relationship addiction", so, I operated via the standardly oft-repeated modus, and I had sex with the suicide video guy again, just so that I could get out of the relationship with Evan again...because gee, don'tcha know, I can't just be all, "Oh, yeah, sorry, dude, I forgot, I'm too fucked up for all this, and I don't want to be with you - my bad."

That was on January 1, go figure. Way to start the New Year, eh? I totally avoided writing about it, too, until now. But I do feel a bit better, doing so.

Oh, but - there's more.

I had called #23 (refer to the inventory to the right, somewhere) back in November when Margaret died, and we started talking again. His story is, when his wife left him six years ago, he wanted to kill himself, but instead of pulling the trigger of the gun that he was holding to his head on the pier, he checked into a psych ward and then a rehab and got sober. I hadn't talked to him since April, besides a few tens of obsessive emails I'd sent him after I stopped dating him (and I had stopped dating him because I got painful withdrawals from being away from him, and I figured it would be better to just end it and let go completely than to keep enduring those withdrawals...they sucked a lot of ass and hurt really, really badly). When I called him in November I used him like a therapist and spilled my guts, and would do so about every couple weeks, until a couple Thursdays ago, when I asked if I could see him in person, because I was depressed and needed a friend.

When I spent the night with him, I told him that I didn't want to have sex. He actually respected me. I think that's the first time that's ever happened with a male. (That statement belongs in bold.) So, the following week I went and spent the night with him again (this was last Friday, the day before I finally talked to my therapist on the phone, which I did from his apartment). And this time he was sick, so, we didn't even hug. We just talked. He just...totally...cared...about me...both times. It was shocking.

My obsession for him was lifted back in May, so these days he really is more of a friend. And he just showed me what a friend actually looks like. But I have developed a new obsession.

Of course, we'll call this one #30. He's the real reason I got rid of the other two guys (the Pizza Delivery Boyfriend and the Satellite Communications Engineer), in one fell swoop, 22 days ago, by the way. It wasn't just me not liking those other guys, or actually finally trying to change for real now. Nope - along came Jason.

I've "known" him since July, when I started singing at the church he works at as the sound engineer. I added him on facebook on Dec 29, he said hi in a facebook message, we messaged each other for hours, and he suggested we "jam" because he's also a musician (he sings w/piano). The jam invitation, over these past few weeks, turned into daily texting, which turned into sexting, which turned into us hanging out, which turned into us having sex, which turned into him becoming my boyfriend a few days ago (on Jan 19).

Okay, I can't write about this any more for now. I'm glad I've gotten this much out so far, though. I hope to get back into writing again, even though my classes have started - I have three of them. And two jobs. And meetings. And a four year-old. And a boyfriend. And now...therapy that I'm paying for and will probably end up taking some kind of medication because of -- oh, but, well, I guess I shouldn't say that I'll be taking meds because of the therapy, but because of whatever "disorders" my therapist and my doctor decide I have. General anxiety disorder has been mentioned. The depression may be situational, she says, but she's not sure yet, so we're gonna keep meeting twice a week to figure this all out.

But I'm really depressed about it the whole damn thing, if you want to know the truth (sorry, I do love Salinger's Holden).

More About the Pizza Delivery Boyfriend and the Satellite Communications Engineer

The first of the new year is a time, I've noticed, for many writers, myself no exception, to ponder especially deeply about what it is they're writing about, and why they're writing. Ray Rhamey postulates at his writing blog, Flogging the Quill, "The start of the new year is often a time folks resolve to do things, sometimes differently, sometimes new, in the coming year. At the least, it's a time to reflect on where you are now and where you want to go." After my last post, I'd like to say that where I've been and where I'd like to go don't really matter - since the only Time there is is Now - but then I'd have absolutely no reason to write, whatsoever. I know I need to get off the existential soapbox and get back to writing stories. My stories are about relationships, "love", sex, and while not always true with a "capital T", they come from my own experiences and my own perspective. And writing about them is what's happening now, for me. 

I do want to make sure I watch my grammar - I think. At The Huffington Post's "Grammarly" blog, the Grammarly Editor shared 7 Grammar Mistakes we're all probably making, based on the errors found in the 300,000+ novels written this past November during National Novel Writing Month. But, from what I can tell, I don't have an issue with any of these: missing commas, run-on sentences, comma splices, comma misuse, and missing articles. But these, I'm not so sure about: definite vs indefinite article use (meticulous use of "a/an" vs "the") and redundant articles (repeating the article when unnecessary: "I want a car, a plane, a boat, a train"). I do know I use a lot of sentence fragments. Sometimes I just like to write the way I speak. I'd never use a sentence fragment in a formal paper. 

If you'd really like to see someone break the rules, read Goat by Brad Land. An author, "Matt," offers a "ruthless review" of the memoir...but it's on website called "Ruthless Reviews", so there ya go - it's their shtick. I was particularly fond of Goat. I appreciate breaking writing rules - as long as one knows he or she is breaking them. And when I break them, I do know, at least, for the most part - but I'm always worried about whether the reader knows that I know. But Brad Land gave me the permission say 'never mind - fuck you'. And I like that. Or do I? Okay - I still don't know.

However I'm writing, I still struggle a slight bit with what I'm writing about - I know what I'm writing about, and it's cool with me, but, does any body else care, and is any body even reading it? In literary agent Janet Reid's blog about writing, one of her latest posts included a question from a reader: "What the hell am I supposed to blog about?" Her answer summarily was this: Don't blog. Janet recommends facebook or twitter for aspiring writers to get their names out there. Well, I can't really do that. I can't have all my friends reading about my sex life. My friends include professors, bosses, church leaders, family, etc. So, I write under a pseudonym. It limits my audience for me to be writing memoir as it actually happens. I imagine it wouldn't matter if I were writing about childhood, or about my marriage that ended two years ago, but I'm writing about the guy I fucked yesterday (well, not today - maybe in the next post).

And why am I writing? Well, I'm not really trying to get my "name" out there; I just want my "writing" out there. I'm not interested in joining NaNoWriMo. If I were to write a novel, it wouldn't be over the course of just a month - I'm too much of a perfectionist for that. And if I do write a novel, I'll use my real name. I've considered that, actually. I've even thought of turning Adora Fallbrook into a character and writing about her in the third person, or maybe still in the first person and changing things enough so that she isn't too close to "me". I'm already doing that with my "characters", in a sense: when I write about the men I've been with, I'm not focusing so much on "who" they really "are", but on my perspective of them and the events that transpired between us. And that perspective changes all the time, so I might write something about one of them, and then my perspective changes, and so that writing is no longer "true", if it ever was, any way.

For example: I wrote about The Shakespeare Connoisseur under the assumption that he had had ulterior motives. He's an older man with money, so I called him a "sugar daddy" because he took me out to a Shakespeare play and frequently to brunch, and he had wanted to help me out with my poorly-running car. But I told him about what had happened between me and The Propane Truck Driver ("Sterling" and I had had sex and four days later he had told me he had herpes), and The Shakespeare Connoisseur, "Deniro", stopped contacting me. I therefore assumed, despite his assurances, that what he'd wanted from me wasn't just my company or to help me. I was resentful when I wrote the post about him.

But, then, I did hear from him some time later. He asked how I was doing, and I told him that I was short $1043.00 for next semester's tuition, so I was trying to decide whether or not I would continue school. Despite my fears about him, he was something of a mentor to me, and I decided to go ahead and ask him for a loan, and give him the benefit of the doubt - or ignore my prior assumption - and hope for the best. We had lunch together again, and I told him about my blog, and about my "problems" with men. He offered this as a provision for the loan: that I maintain no more than two relationships with men at any given time, and keep him abreast of my situation.

I had, prior to that, joined a group for "sex and love addicts", and it was suggested to me there to go through a "withdrawal" period and not be with any men. So that's what I was attempting to do. But, then, like a little girl from her dad, I got "permission" from Deniro to see not just one man but two. "Who will they be?" I thought. Well, that same day I was entreated by both #1, The Pizza Delivery Boyfriend and #29, The Satellite Communications Engineer/Composer, so there I had my two. I've spent most of my time with #1, with #29 waiting, asking me frequently when we might meet. And I'd planned on meeting with him today - but I have #1 in my house at the moment. And #1 watched my son for me yesterday while I took a friend to see her neurosurgeon, because she walks with a walker and doesn't drive, for 6 hours. So now my conscience is weighing heavily upon me, as it is wont to do.

Also, speaking of conscience - I hadn't the slightest inkling of it when I gave #25 my blog url. Interestingly enough, I've also given it to #1 and #29, in the interest of "honesty". I thought #25 might like to comment on my writing, and see more "in depth" the nature of what I thought to be my problem. Only, my mind somehow completely omitted the fact that I'd written about #25 in not the best light. In a terrible light, rather.

He was terribly offended, naturally. It brought the end of the relationship. I'm to mail him his check for repayment and his Ron Paul book (he was educating me in politics), and that's that.

So...back to the "why" of my writing - I had originally begun writing as a way to analyze my relationships and sex/love life, but chose a blog format so that I could share it with "the world". Of course, I'm writing from my own perspective. Perhaps, as an exercise both in creative writing and in humanitarianism, I should write from one of their perspectives soon.

Now that'll be interesting.

Oh, and PS: I remembered another guy to add to the list. He's The Christian Airplane Mechanic. I just went over to his house a few times and we went shopping at Home Depot together once. It was at another time when I was trying not to date, and so I maintained the relationship at the platonic level. But I definitely need to include him. I can't leave any one out. I just won't give him the url. I don't want to lose any more friends. But oh well. That's being a memoirist in real time for ya.

Happy New Year!

Ramblings on the Writing Process

It has been hard for me to get back into writing after I wrote my last post. I feel like my writing was sub-par. All over the place. Incoherent. Timeline unclear, jagged, going backward and forward with awkwardly long, frantic sentences. And the content itself was a bit...jarring. Overwhelming. Sickening. I couldn't find the wherewithal to keep going.

I've noticed that my writing wavers like a stick on an old-fashioned metronome, ticking back and forth between writing for catharsis and change -- and writing just to write. On the former side, my writing suffers with my own suffering: I'm charged with emotional recall; I don't care how the words fall off my fingertips and slap themselves onto the screen, just as long as they get out of me and onto it. On the other side, however, I couldn't "care" less "about" "what" I'm writing, so long as I'm writing -- but, even more importantly, writing well. Once in a long while, the ticker slows to stop for a moment, and I, suddenly aware, am suspended, poised in the middle between "meaning" and its signposts, between "content" and the characters that I'm using to represent it. Here is where I hope to find my writing identity.

The purpose of my blog is two-fold, and I find it difficult to stay in balance. One, I'm blogging things (or facts, events) that have "happened" in my life - focusing most intently on the past two years - as a means to prevent things similar from occurring. These things are ones that make me go "Ugh". But I'd much rather the things make me go "Ugh" than the writing itself (writing itself being the second half of the purpose of this blog, of course). My last post stopped my writing process in its tracks, because, that time, both the content and its form offended me terribly. I didn't like what I wrote or how I wrote it.

Here is a brief summary of my blog's "content", or the "what" of it: After watching my relationship with my husband crumble to the ground after ten years of steady erosion and a final heave-ho, I sifted through boyfriends, one-night stands...and before I knew it, was buried under a heaping, stinking pile of men. I enlisted myself in a program for "sex and 'love' addicts", thinking that my problem may be my "powerlessness" (i.e., my seeming inability to say "no" to any man who expresses any interest in me whatsoever). The founder of this program suggests, in his book written for one who identifies as a "sex and 'love' addict", to write a "relationship inventory". This inventory's purpose is to help one identify specific actions in order to discern patterns of behavior with the goal of unearthing motives (or seeing what one "gets" from people s/he has "used"...seeing what the "pay-off" is). Then, one should be able to see how selfish, dishonest, and afraid one has been and acknowledge how one has hurt others with his/her self-seeking motives and actions/patterns. This awareness, along with a surrender to a "power greater than oneself" and a willingness to "let" the behaviors and their propelling motives "go", is supposed to get one to make restitution/amends for harm done and aid other "suffering" "sex and 'love' addicts" which will, inherently, cause one to cease acting out in the patterns of behavior that created the events that made him/her go "Ugh" in the first place. And the inventory's purpose is fulfilled. Boom. Done.

When I found out I should write about all my relationships in order to "recover", I was pretty excited. I love writing! And a former writing professor of mine is writing a blog about his experience with cancer and its treatment (he also writes about bicycling across the U.S.). He also blogs about the writing process itself. It's very inspiring. So, I decided to turn my inventory into a blog so that I could use it both as my motivation to "change" as well as, perhaps one day, material for an actual memoir that I'll publish and have people maybe even read someday!

But...my very influential professor has helped me to see that how one writes is just as important as what one is writing about (along with the books I read in his autobiography-themed lit class in college). His writing appears to be in balance between its content and its characters of representation. It's not just a bunch of emotional rambling that pays no mind to the words being used...nor is it composed of meticulously placed words on a screen without any "real" content behind them.

In contrast, my metronomablog keeps ticking between the two. Here are a few insights I had gleaned about myself last night, before I started to care about how I was writing. I'm not going to do any editing, so you can see a true example of what my content is really like when I pay no mind to characters (as opposed to the above writing, which I've spent seven full hours editing!):



1. I get "high" from a man's attention. My heart beats fast. My body gets hot. My breathing is labored. It's a surge of adrenaline. I like it.

2. I get bored after the "high" is gone. I'm not actually interested in the hard "relationship" stuff. I tried that all ready, and it didn't work. Plus, I start to miss myself when I spend too much time with a guy. I never really got to find myself in the first place, I don't think. So I run to extremes and break it off instead of just try to slow things down.

3. I don't actually like the sex with the men all that much. Sex is just the thing I put up with after I get my "attention high". I do my best to pretend I enjoy it, so he still likes me and I can get "high" again the next time I see him, but then I don't get "high" again, or sometimes I do a couple more times, but soon enough, it goes away - and when that happens, so do I.

4. I still love the guy I ended up with after I left my husband over two years ago. I actually do enjoy sex with him, and, I still get "high" when I see him (or maybe it's not a "high" and is "real love"...who knows?). But it's hard as hell for me to accept him: he lives with his mom and stepdad and doesn't have a job and is about to have his car repossessed and his phone turned off and is more full of self-pity and devoid of motivation than anyone I know.

5. I want a guy to take care of me financially. But, when I find ones who are willing and able to do so, I don't want to be with them, after all. I fucked up by not getting my degree or starting a full-time career; I was being taken care of by my husband who received monthly money from his Indian tribe. Now I have to put my big girl pants on and go to night school and get a full-time job so I don't need a man to build a house on my grandparents' 20 acres (that's what James, the last guy, wanted to do, after knowing me for a week). No thanks, dude -- I can build my own damn house.

6. I'm so goddamn focused on the past and future that I don't actually do anything now to change my life situation. "Someday this will happen, and I'll be happy." "I can't believe all the shit I've done; I'm so disappointed in myself." You know what? Fuck that. I'll just be happy right now. 

Okay, this blog is taking a weird turn. But let's roll with it. Who fucking cares about the men I've been involved with over the past couple years? I don't even care any more. All I care about is what I'm doing right now. And right now I'm sitting merrily at my laptop, typing words - it's something I very much enjoy doing. But it's not making me any money, at the moment, which makes me revert back to insight number 5. Actually, I happen to be on a two-week unpaid forced vacation from my 20-hour-a-week 10-dollar-an-hour job.

So....it's time to get back into reading Mary Karr -- I need to finish her memoir, damnit...but every time I read it, I read like two pages and can't even keep going because I get all inspired and my fingers get itchy...which is cool, I guess. But it doesn't help me write any better if I don't keep reading actually good writing.

And as far as writing for change goes, well, guess what -- writing about the men I've been with over the past two years still hasn't stopped me from being with men. After the Propane Truck Driver, whom I considered to be my "rock bottom", there was the Satellite Communications Engineer, and now...well, you know that guy I talked about in insight number 4? The guy I wrote about me cheating on and leaving, over, and over, and over? Yep - the Pizza Delivery Boyfriend and I are back together, again.

But it's all good. At least I still have writing for the sake for writing. :)

Ugh.

Cleaning Up the Mess You've Made

I was talking to my sister Dawn on the phone a moment ago. She was telling me about her Thanksgiving and the various drunken brawls that took place. She broke our cousin Tanya's nose and now Tanya won't talk to her (she's as alcoholic as we and the rest of our mom's side; Tanya's dad, our uncle, is in prison for killing someone in a D.U.I). Makes me grateful for my Thanksgiving. We only talked about drugs and alcohol and abuse. No one actually engaged in any of those activities at the occasion. But I happened to be in the home of the one normal person in all our family on either side, and that's our aunt Kay, our dad's sister. Every one else is just fucking nuts.



At the end of the convo, Dawn complained about her floor. There are dirty footprints all over it, she says, even though she just mopped it. Now she has to mop again. It's a nightmare. She's gotta go.

"It's the perfect metaphor for life," I said. "We clean up the mess, and then there's another one. We clean that up, and then it's messy all over again. We just can't keep it clean, damn it."



Recovery from sex and love addiction begins with a 90-day "withdrawal" and "inventory" period. For 90 days, you lock yourself in, keep everyone else out, and mop up all the dirty footprints without letting any more accumulate. It's a painstaking, thankless, nasty job. But you gotta get that floor clean. It doesn't mean it's not going to get messed up again in the future. But there sure is a lot of shit there, man, and if you get any more shit piled on top of that shit, you'll never get it clean. Just git 'r done. Then spot-clean daily, as needed.

After 42 days, I had hardly made headway cleaning up the old crap when more mess got tracked in on top of it all. It drove me fucking crazy. I was at the leaver of these new footprints' house last night, and he asked me if we could masturbate while we made out.  I said "no". He walked me out to my car, and I told him I wouldn't be seeing him again. No more dirty soles.



Of course, I gotta check my shoes, too. My former husband used to always call 'em CFM boots. "Oh, you're wearing your CFM boots today, huh hon?" I thought it was the acronym for some elite and glamorous style. It's the acronym for a style, all right.

But it's not really the boots that say, "Come Fuck Me".

It's me.

A Letter from My Higher Power

After Margaret killed herself and I endured the most excruciating pain in my life, I thought that, suddenly, I had become empathic. Suddenly I cared about people. It only lasted a week.

A week after she died, a guy asked me for my number, we went on a date, had sex, and all of a sudden I forgot what pain felt like.

I'm in a strange limbo, now. Do I want the pain back, or not? I've noticed that I've lost all empathy for my fellows. I sent an ex-boyfriend a link to my blog in response to his entreating, because, for some reason, I thought he should "know the truth." I thought that would be easier than just turning him down again. Well, easier for me, sure...but not for him.

He sent me a suicide email. I responded to that email with angry, high-and-mighty how-dare-you-after-what-I've-just-been-through tirades, and he sent me a new suicide email with a 5-year expiration date this time. I sent him more how-dare-yous. He responded with his own how-dare-you, and I responded with, "Eh, I stopped at 'how dare you.' It's just not even worth it. Lates, homes."

Where did my caring go? Am I just that numb that my ex could kill himself, and I'd just be all, "Been there, done that...whatevs."?

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do from here. I just told one of my best friends that I'd gotten a suicide email from my ex after I sent him a link to my blog, expecting her to be on my side. Big surprise. She had to hang up, she was so disgusted with me. I upset her, big time.

I thought, "Whoa, is that what I'm supposed to be like? Like...care?" (Somehow I saw myself as the victim in this suicide email scenario.)

I know that if I stop dating this guy (who is now willing to not have sex until marriage, so it's so hard to say "no" to him now...he wants to take me to a play in Coronado tomorrow night)...I'll be a better person. But right now...I'm in "relapse mode".

[Time lapse]

Okay, I just got off the phone with my sponsor. I did cry, real tears, so that's good. And I feel pain again. She recognized that I'm creating wreckage, so she gave me this assignment: "Adora, I want you to write, right now, a letter to you from your higher power. What would God say to you about Margo, about this guy you're dating, about your ex? Then I want you to call me back and read it to me." I love my sponsor. She always reminds me about the ol' HP.

So, here goes:

Dear Adora (that's not your real name, but I'll humor you here),

Stop. Look up. Listen.

I gave you Margo so you could heal. I placed her right in front of you when you needed someone most. When you started recovering, though, you left her behind. You stopped spending time with her. You stopped helping her. You weren't doing My Will. So I took her away so you could feel, so you could learn to be there for others. I wanted you to experience real pain and sadness, and come through the other side of it with the true capacity to love. I had other reasons for Margo and for others, but those ones are for you. But you took that growth and learning opportunity away from yourself by dating this new guy. It's like Margo died for nothing. You aren't getting what you were supposed to out of it. In one week you were over her death, thanks to this...distraction...of yours. One week. You are back to being comfortably numb and blithely unaware of the messages I am trying to send to you, and you are no longer on the path I set you on. You've blocked yourself from the Sunlight of the Spirit once again.

You are really good at convincing yourself that everything on Earth is from Me. You say that "everything that happens" is My Will. Well, Adora, I've got news for you. Sometimes, it's your will. Sometimes, it's a man's will. It's not always Mine.

I'll make situations work for Me, sure. If you insist on going a certain direction, away from Me, I'll find a way to turn you back around. But it's a lot harder down those roads than if you would just walk with Me from the beginning. Usually, the lesson I give you then is much more painful. Wouldn't you rather get the blessings that come from staying by My Side?

Don't you trust Me?

I don't want you to hurt any one. And I don't want any one to hurt you, but I can't stop them. I can only work through you, if you let Me. But you have to let Me in, and keep Me there. I know it hurts sometimes. Life is painful when you don't use people or other things to make yourself feel better. But I'll make you feel better, if you trust Me and stay with Me. You don't need to lash out in anger at your fellows. They don't have Me with them when they are hurting you. But if you keep Me with you, they can't hurt you at all. Be My Love, even in the face of wrath, and you'll feel My Love.

You don't know what I have in store for you. That's okay. You don't have to know. Do you know how crazy you'd be if you knew the future? And what then would be the point of living? There'd be no surprises.

It's time for you to be honest. You haven't been completely honest with "James" because you are trying to get things from him. You are being selfish, self-seeking, dishonest, and afraid. You haven't told him how terrible it makes you feel to date him, when you had given yourself the boundaries of no dating until you've completed your relationship inventory and no sex until marriage (and you broke both with him). You're just so focused on the end result that you envision for yourself. You want to be married to a successful, spiritual man who will treat you with respect...and save you. More news: "James" may not be as spiritual as you project. Does he pray morning and night, asking for knowledge of My Will and the power to carry it out? Does he carry the vision of My Will into all of his activities? Does he take his own moral inventory, and serve others, or does he do what he wants, when he wants, how he wants, for himself? You don't even know the answers to these questions. Worst of all, you are giving up going to meetings to date him. Please stop.

I know fantasy is more appealing than reality. But you got off the merry-go-round before, and you can do it again. I won't push you off -- but you're welcome to get off yourself, any time you'd like, when you're ready to come back to Me. Take the leap of faith. I'll hold your hand, and I won't let go -- if you won't.

Love,

GOD

Boundaries; and Margaret, part 4

Here's the draft I wrote this morning:

"Okay Mr. Awesome, lemme lay it down for ya. :) First, I'm quite taken with you, and am certain that you're 20,000 leagues above any one I've ever dated in as many ways as I can think of, and, I feel an uncannily strong connection with you.

"Second...Okay, so, the whole no-sex-til-marriage thing might have been extreme...ly impossible....to uphold. BUT...can we try this?: Rather than using what you consider to be a too-rigorous and out-dated socio-religious more (accent on the "e") to dehumanize my own personal journey, considering my no-sex boundary meaningless, can you allow me to just be certain that you like me for me before we get intimate again (for THIS, truly, is the point)?

"I have to be honest: I held back the other night/morning because I was specifically trying to not impress you in the sexual arena (which is just the opposite of my ideal sexual situation), just because I didn't want you to want me for just that. So, here, I'm granting you honesty, rather than ducking and running (my old modus operandi). So...would you be willing to wait, say, 10 dates, and THEN let us go totally buck wizzild?"

But after sitting on it and having more time to think, I realized that to set a boundary all I really have to do is set the boundary, with no lengthy, groveling, rambling, TMI-explanation necessary. So, here's what I actually texted him (and it's still totally passive):

"Would you mind if I had you pick me up from work instead? I know the no-sex-til-marriage idea is extreme, but I would just feel more comfortable if we had a few more dates first before adding that back in. Are you okay with that?"

No response yet. Who knows, maybe I won't get one. Or maybe he does actually like me for who I "am" (to the extent of the "me" that he could possibly get to know in less than a day).

And why does the no-sex-til-marriage idea have to be extreme (if it's my idea)? If that's truly what I want, then why can't I just have it? And how the hell did 10 dates go down to "a few"? I shake my head at myself.

From the website Daily Plate of Crazy, here's a snip of an article entitled Sexual Boundaries: When No Means No, by D.A. Wolf:

"All joking aside, we need to set boundaries even when we’re open to exploring them, and communicate – like adults – when we’re uncomfortable or unwilling to pursue an activity further.

Lifescript’s article offers this, which is essential:

Your partner should respect your boundaries… If he presses you at all, consider whether he’s the right guy for you."

It would have been better to slap that initial boundary back on and say, "Look, pal, if you wanna see me again, you're gonna respect me and my boundaries, period. If not...I'll find a different ambitious, intelligent, handome, spiritual, 30-something engineer/composer who travels around the world and has his own place...who is willing to wait for marriage to fuck me." Ugh. I guess I could always try e-harmony or match.com. Or nothing. This dating thing is...difficult....to say the least.

Thank God I didn't include the I-held-back-during-the-initial-sex-but-if-you're-willing-to-wait-I'll-become-your-total-sex-slave-and-rock-your-world bait. Jesus.

I posted this on my facebook page, but I'll share it here as well:

"Eesh, the pain's back. Chest, throat. Nagging, heavy, wrenching. I miss you, Margaret*. Read my journal entries last night from January 2013 when you were trying to teach me how to set boundaries with people and stick to them. I want to do a better job, in your honor (and mine). I can't let the things you taught me go to waste. You told me, "The first time you set a boundary, you're gonna feel like you're gonna die." Yep, you knew it'd be hard for me. Then, "The people who accept your boundaries are the healthy ones; the people who don't accept your boundaries are the sick ones." You also taught me to "stick with the winners" so I wouldn't get hurt (meaning spiritually-fit people). And, you said that "people will show you who they are, so pay attention."  

"Margaret, you were the strong woman I want to be. Thanks for taking the time to help me, and I'm sorry it took me losing you for the things you were trying to teach me to really sink in. I'm going to make mistakes, but I'll have you with me, always, to remind me to keep loving myself first and not let any one take advantage of me, period."

It's just too bad Margaret just got sick and tired of it all. Maybe she just didn't see any more winners out there.

The pain started when I got a call from her sponsor letting me know that she had just gotten out of Margaret's lawyer's office for the reading of her Will (that she'd sent in before she offed herself). He sponsor said my name was mentioned and gave me the number for Margaret's lawyer. I just called, and she's having me come in tomorrow at 10 am for another reading. Apparently Margaret left me with something tangible, too.

God, I really feel like shit for having sex with this guy when this whole time (the 37 days since I entered the sex and love addiction recovery with gusto) Margaret was right there with me, cheering me on, and she was shocked that I was actually able to do it, but she was so proud of me. And then after she takes herself out, what do I do to cope but take the first opportunity do the very thing she was trying to help me not do? Well, it wasn't the first opportunity from the very beginning. I'd turned down a total of seven guys over the course of my sex/love recovery. But, dur, when I saw this guy's suicide video, I thought the hand of God was upon me. But now...man, it just feels...icky.

You live, you learn. I'm just not so fond of the whole learning-by-pain bit. But eh, guess it's really the only thing that works, in the end.

*As usual, that's not her real name. Thought I'd go ahead and disclaim that for any new readers. With few exceptions, due to the "racy" nature of my blog, most names have been changed, including mine.