My wedding dress

So I am driving with a friend through some rural area and we pull over to check the map. I see this clothes hanger on a branch..."LOOK! Its my wedding dress! I found it!" is the first thing that pops out of my mouth. My friend insists on photographing me with it. It's perfect isn't it?

I am Patchwork

 

Stiches and scabs. This is where the healing begins. This is where you make it happen, how you keep going how you swear to the sky you won't give up. I want to give up. i want to dig a shallow hole in cool damp earth and feel it press against my back and shoulder blades and dig in and relax and sink. I love the earth, when i was younger, I  would happily dig up worms and roots and marvel at the shades of black and brown and tan and sandy grain and fluffy soil and how it felt soft like my mother. Under my nail and between toes, it felt like home all over me.

Nothing feels so good and real and whole and honest and that is where i want to be, every particle of me wants to dissolve back into it, every particle but one.

and that one particle has your name it, whoever you are.

i love you.

i am patchwork. i am pulling it together.

i am reaching for the sky now.

We are going to make it we are going to be just fine just fine just fine this fleshy vessel is made of psychic steel and it can contain all the burning sorrow that you can give me.

every inch, every ounce, every day.

I am going to be just fine.

we are. all of us.

what I am doing

is what i said I was going to do, right? I moved here for the job, I went back to school, I live alone. This is fine, this is okay -  I am going to be okay. I did what I said I was going to do. It hurts, it sucks. Whatever. I don't know why I suddenly reverted back to a weaker version of me, but I feel like I may collapse if I have to feel one more drop of pain. Anyone's pain. I'm a sponge, im a goddamn sponge for other people's pain. I don't know why. The people that I get close too, i get this overwhelming sort of empathy or something...I don't know why I am so emotional -  I always have been -  it makes everything much more difficult and for no real reason. I am frequently in an enormous amount of psychic pain and i just really want it to stop and the more people I meet the more pain I feel.

I am not sure what is going to happen next.

over me

well that ended quickly.
and honestly.
 I always end up liking people too much.
He was merciful at least.
I find other people's pain overwhelming and i feel it. i feel it
          i have too much schoolwork to drink but all i want to do is drink.
seriously. xanax and beer.

pretty web of confusion and lies and then shiny sleep

tie me to something pretty

I met another boy. I swear to god i wish i could quite falling in love with people...with their voices and eyelashes and stupid dirty boots and movements of index fingers...



 I know I'm not over the other situation.   

I am terrified of this heart

I miss A.N.

this is chaos

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't afraid.

I am drinking again 

Try to Remember

"For life is the best thing we have in this existence. And if we should desire to believe in something, it should be a beacon within. This beacon being the sun, sea, and sky, our children, our work, our companions and, most simply put, the embodiment of love."
— Patti Smith

So this boy used a battering ram on my vaulted heart until it busted open, and then he got this look of disgust and walked away. Seriously, and im fucking sick and tired and my  doctor just called me in a script to klonipin which i SWORE i would never ever take again but i started school and its overwhelming and im working 40 hours and i am always alone and this city is all concrete and cramped and steel and i tried not to like that guy but he just convinced me that he wanted to like, live with me and know me and "make our own memories together" and could see me having his kids and the whole time i was begging him to not lie to me but he was lying the whole time and the second i believed him he was done with me and i swear to god i have never been used before but now i have and it is quite dreadful and shocking and some part of me believes i deserve better than this and another part of me just wants the poison to sink in faster

Last One

This was written on the wall of one of the abandoned houses I surveyed in NOLA. Squatters had been living there even though it was in deplorable condition.

I see the remnants of desperation in these houses.

So what happened was...

I met a boy and I like him. Right, I know -  its like a total dis to my Spinster librarian dream. I say that lightly -  but seriously I never thought I would do this. Not Again. Anyway I'm not so good at controlling emotions and I wanted this.... so I went with it. Stick around for the break up blog, guys. So I have sort of been in a romance chemical induced haze for 6 weeks. I drove back home and talked to my T about it, and she agreed that chemical X is intense and strong. Dopamine and she named another one. I can't recall. Yes they are strong but are they REAL? You know I am obsessed with the REAL. Anway, I've been busy with some amazing work, as well. I love my job even though I feel like I am on egg shells quite often. So that is where I have been. I hope you have somewhere blissful.

I must go back to do more work now, but does anyone do Tumblr? i just made this:http://stellarscar.tumblr.com/

October 2010 half moon

Too Much Too Dream

St Louis Number One.
I drank again last night and then I fell asleep and my brain churned dreams like mad. I dreamed of the dead. My dead friends. In these dreams, I am always trying to ask them questions.....I never get answers. It doesn't matter. It was good too see them.

Be Here Now

This is my sister and I a couple years ago. At Tybee. So her wedding was this past weekend and it was marvelous and beautiful. I was excited and then on the way back home (8 hour drive) I got really sad about how far away I am from her..and her new family but no matter where I am, I am always far from someone I want to be close to. And...the thing is I still don't feel like I belong anywhere. I know this is a process and a journey and all of that but sometimes i feel like I have been progressing towards something and I am ready to be there. But I can not actually define what the this thing is. Sometimes I feel like if I hurry up and get this done I can go home.  But I don't know what that feeling is really about bc when i am at my parent's house, in the forest I grew up in, I feel as if I am wasting time and I need to be in the real world making some sort of life for myself. But then Im out here and I just feel like a sugar cube dissolving in hot acid. Not that I am particularly sweet but it seems like the best parts of me just keep getting wasted.
And that just seems really unfortunate and I am not sure what to do about it.
Also, at the wedding someone asked me if I had been on a date in this city yet. I haven't been on a date in five years. And i never really thought about it. Then I got bothered by the fact that I have not been bothered by this fact. I don't go out bc no one ever asks and I never met anyone that I wanted to ask. It is very simple. Someone asked me to marry them 8 months ago and I said No because I didn't want to be married. It is very simple.
And of course in reality NOTHING is really ever that simple.
I love history and I have a past doing research on architecture and art. I got this  great job as an architectural historian in an interesting city. Chance of LIFETIME in this drab economy. Im sitting at work today and get this smell like turpentine. I want to cry bc I want to be in the painting lab so bad. THERE IS NO PAINTING LAB ANYMORE. I suddenly think "I hate architecture and I hate history"
Now of course I don't really, but it seems like no matter where I am I feel like i ought to be somewhere else...doing some thing else.
I was about to be an art teacher but I stopped. I stopped. teaching. It was too much. This is better. This has to be better bc it is what i decided to do.
But ART was not something I DID, It was who I was.
and now...i feel like a worker bee in this giant swampy nest of moss and steel and wood and glass. And the sad thing is, the city is quite Old and Slow in terms of lifestyle. I don't know what is wrong with me, I woke in a fairytale and then the inevitable tragic twist and then I got to be me, i guess. I got to be here.

24s used to be loose but now 28s are too tight.
I always said I would not use exact numbers or weights on this blog but i feel so foreign and detached from it all now that it doesn't seem to matter. I am shopping in a sea of women and girls and they are all different sizes and shapes and wildy different in clothing and hairstyle and a few of them look thin enough to break in half but most of them look physically healthy and happy to be chatting about colors and fits and The Saints and their dogs over racks of used clothing. They appear happy, but I understand that most people are walking damns for a river of pain. Anyway, I want to fit in. Not in size 0 but in with healthy happy people who are doing things. Like sewing and going to concerts and volunteering at the SPCA animal shelter and growing plants and having friendly conversations over coffee....

I feel like a stray that has been wandering in the bone yard and howling prayers to the moon for visible ribs...alone for so long i began to go mad. Masochistic and sad. I have inched nearer to the town and I am watching distrustful and longing. This venture has taken years and years and really i just want to go back. dig in the dirt for skull of an ex lover and mourn the marrow. However - There is no going back.

It has occured to me  that -  what if i have gained too much? gone too far? I am alone in this, no one is there, there is no advice. I need a balance and I need a safe place to run. There is a Fine Line somewhere and i must find it... Looking healthy does not MEAN healthy. I know this. I have made the path. I have made the choice. And it feels quite right. and quite wrong.

Under Lock and Key

Suddenly the internet seems full of spies. Maybe bc I am in a city with so many more people, maybe bc of all the OMG FACEBOOK PRIVACY....news stories about how so and so didn't get a  job bc they posted a drunken pic on myspace 2 years ago. WTF, man this isn't cool at all. I found a LOT of support for some very personal issues on internet forums and in blogs but the idea that they are being catalogued in the library of congress makes me ill ( somebody told that was the fate of all tweets).

Not sure WHY this just occured to me with such force but I know that one reason is because i have more to lose now, than before. Now, my job is really laid back and cool and this is NOLA so drinking is not only normal but encouraged...but still. What do i do with the mental issues and the recovery/recovered process. Hide them? i wanted to advocate but that seems harder than i thought....the insults about "crazy' drippping from mouths is a bit much when you already feel desperate to hold onto what you have.

Of course its not like i am going to run for SENATE or anything. But the idea that my future husband's divorce lawyer (lol) could use a myspace blog from 2008 as evidence of my mental instability is unsettling. Who knows, man? Who knows where this internet social networking thing may lead. A lot of the starved caffeinated rambling poetry i posted on myspace in 2006 was GOOD imo, but I don't want everyone to see it. Or steal it. And i set the privacy controls to " friends only" but does that really mean anything? like locking the front door....or closing a curtain. Probably not much.

So yeah that is one reason i have suddenly been hesitant to blog....Yet i don't want to delete anything. (i have been told repeatedly that "deleting" does not really make it go away. Google has a file on you somewhere.....) I don't want to LOSE anything or anyone. I really just want the world and the internet to be a safe place. And it isn't.

blink of an eye

It is a good sentiment but it isn't true. Not for me anyway, and i had thought of it years before. In that moment when i was hoping to know an answer, all I usually felt was panic...bc i really didn't know. But i knew how much it MATTERED.

One eyes sees light

So i downloaded the browser Firefox instead of Safari as Blogger Help suggested and now I can post pics again. Hmmm.... who knew? Anyways, Here is a picture of an old friend that I made up and that I miss.

broken blog

I keep trying to upload pictures and they never show up. This is unbelievably annoying. Like how the digital clock in my car went out....that is much more annoying that you may think....this whole world is going to smother under an avalanche of this electrical shite that don't work....

OMG the Big Easy

so i made it and i am pretty much finally settled. I have internet and a bed and stuff. This is crazy adjustment time. I pretty much have a new body, a new place, a new job and a new city. and thousands of more people that I have ever been in contact with for an extended period of time and that, my friend, is absolutely bizzaro-land to me. All these people....like, 20 feet away -  all the time, even while I am sleeping. Seriously, I have visited cities bigger than this, of course, and even stayed a while, but to build a semi permanent Nest in the middle of more than a million people is against my natural instinct. But I am okay. I like it, it is new and different and hopefully a step toward a better career path bc the small town newspaper was crushing my soul to bits. I understand that for some people a city can do the same, and maybe I won't be here forever but for now, I am soaking it all in and remaining relatively sane...no real panicky stuff or anything. Well, except for the body which has gotten massive and foreign and uncomfortable. I won't allow myself to dwell on it, though. That is not easy, but I have been rather stern with myself about it. One thing I have realized is this has been an exchange. I had to gain this weight to make this move. Really, I did. I was too weak physically mentally and emotionally before. The super underweight sick symptoms are different for different people, but my brain suffered first and worst. The panic was so strong. The extreme cold and joint pain and all that was there but my thinking was so strange and twisted. I could not have been vigilant enough to live in a city this dangerous. Anyway the odd thing is, I feel like I am in Recovery 20.0 or something but the people at the new job have already commented that I am thin and I never eat. On the other hand, people who knew me before have commented on how much "bigger" I am now. So strange how the (my) body is SO PRESENT. I have a painting of a mangled abstracted  body that says this body is my battlefield. And so it is.
This city was a battlefield too. More than once. The post-katrina stories I hear are  horrendous...unbelievable. That horror is still there and I can feel it. Panic swells inside me when co-workers re-tell the story of the evacuation and the fire fights that took place here after most residents left (most of those stories remain unreported bc a lot of illegal things happened) However, living here is worth it, returning to this city was worth it for so many, and the recovery is worth it. Recovery of the city and of me.