Almost like it never happened

I had a birthday! To celebrate, I bought myself a high powered gas stove with convection oven. I deserve it, whether I can afford it or not remains to be seen.
I had a curious feeling yesterday while I was half-napping on my sofa. I swear someone knocked on my door and when I got up to answer it there was no one there. but I smelled it. Hugo Boss. There was a time I would get fluttery and girly when he would walk around doused in that cologne. I bought it for him for Christmas one year because I liked the smell and I always had and I never had anyone I wanted to gift it to. But so help me, smelling that scent and it being so freezing cold and dusky outside I just started to cry. I was ding dong ditched by the ghost of a memory of an old love. I can't get it to leave me: not the smell, feeling, or terror of "what if." Is it worth being alone the rest of your life because you can't get past your own morals? I hate even asking myself that question because I just know that somewhere in an alternate time zone is a person who is sitting on his bed whose sheets haven't been washed in forever. He is in his underwear with his computer in his lap and no lights are on except for the glare of the screen. He is eating nutty bars and swiss rolls, lunchmeat and tacos. He is drinking milk straight out of the jug and like, chugging it. He will have not much else in the fridge but there will be plenty of Maruchan in his dresser that he uses for a pantry. Is that what I loved? Not that specifically but I loved him, and I really thought he loved me until I realized I was a fetish, another type of girl to add to his mental collection of body types, personalities and demographics. I imagine the evil witch in Return to Oz with a room of heads. He has a computer of girls.

I don't know...I know I am doing what I wanted and had planned all along for myself. I want to believe that he will realize and learn the lesson that his mother never taught him: that it is ok to walk away from someone who is mistreating your heart. I guess the trick is to learn to walk back with your head up? He never apologized to me for making me feel so unbelievably worthless, unwanted and unloved. I question myself, question my inability to just banish him from my psyche and move on. I may have moved away, but I have not moved on. Admitting that to myself is an awful realization fraught with humiliation. The safest I will ever feel is in the front seat of the car with him driving and me looking at his profile. His smooth clean cheek fading into dark unshaven stubble.

no title

How do you find love in someone who has hurt you to the marrow and the sinews. It's unspeakable to think you have the capacity for that kind of forgiveness; and yet you do. The bombs of heartache have been going off all around me for awhile now; old friends, family members and personal failures. I don't want to believe that permanent, monogamous love is dead and buried. How defeating to think that, as a species, human men and women make conscious decisions to knowingly hurt each other by falling in love with/ making love to other men and women who may also be in a similar situation. It's a nightmare to be bothered  so much by this. I want to shrug it off and say "Hey, I'm a modern girl..." but I absolutely will not. I want someone to consider our unit sacred and cherished. There will be music and light and honesty. Sweet words and wholesome feelings. Love and challenge, it will be everything I really needed from a person, not just the stuff I wanted. I love myself, so I have to protect myself from everyone else. Just lock myself away in a tower and never worry about if anyone will come looking because they are too busy mating and caring about nothing important.

a real human being

I was feeling pretty normal as far as feelings go. I was not bothered by the evidence of my furnace being broken when I came home last night; thank goodness for the wood stove. I wasn't pushed over the edge by the fast-talking, slicked back hair, 1950's pulp novel fantasy boys who work at the downtown Firestone telling me I had
1) a nail in my tire.
2) a right rear wheel bearing that is totally loose.
3) front struts that are rotted and apparently falling apart.
I have had my sweet baby car for almost 10 years this February and I know our time could be winding down and that makes me sad. But alas, what finally pushed me over the edge was finding out my childhood boyfriend (like 5 years old) is engaged to be married to a lovely girl. Why would this bother me? It absolutely shouldn't, I haven't seen him in over twenty years! He is obviously not into Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and whatever else was the basis of our conversations back then. I guess it just feels like I will really be alone forever if only because the movies tell you that you can expect to reconnect and marry your best friend when you are old and have played all the fields. Now he is getting married and it's a wonderful thing but all I feel is the urge to drink champagne in a non-celebratory way. I'm freezing my ass off watching "Bored to Death" and feeling angry-loneliness. I have been packing my heart on ice for years, even with the last one it was pretty packed up tight. I liken my emotional path to find love as a crossword puzzle I can't complete. I keep looking at it, working toward finding the phrase that completes the whole thing and all I can muster up is a blank.  

Like a whole bucket of stars

Tomorrow afternoon I will carry myself across the threshold of home ownership. I have ordered custom "I moved" announcements; this seems appropriate as it isn't fair for us single girls that we have to wait to get married and have a baby before we can announce anything. I did this on my own and I am damn proud of it.

I am visualizing cleaning out my cabinets and lining them with pretty oilcloth. Washing and stacking the Fiestware that has been packed away, patiently awaiting the day that it could fulfill it's dishware destiny. Buying a refrigerator was so exhilarating one would have thought Ryan Gosling himself sold it to me.

I need a chimney sweep but I won't let him in the house unless he looks like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.

 

I have more shopping to do; I have a dining room table but no chairs. I have carpeting but no vacuum, I have highball glasses but no liquor to put in them. 

I feel so calm now. So free and calm. 

May the bridges I burn light the way.

Timing is Everything?

I made the mistake of telling a total stranger that I met at a bar how I felt about an old guy friend. The stranger was also a man and I am telling you this so as not to cause any further confusion. He was around in the years I was here before and we were very good friends then and very good friends now. I care for him dearly and now I am back and the 'olden' days are cropping back up and I feel as if I am standing, yet again, at square one. For someone as forward as I am it is totally unreasonable for me to just keep my mouth shut about it...but I do. As much as I know my body begs for a kiss from him it is almost uncanny how I am able to restrain myself; I don't want to be hurting anymore and I don't want to hurt myself with him. I get angry about it too because there was about five minutes five years ago where I could have put down the tray of Everclear jello shots and just laid one on him and it would have been totally called for. Now...now I think I almost prefer to be at arms length...we are very different from eachother, I broke away from that life for the most part and although I am still friends with that crowd mainly I just want other things. When I told the stranger this he got so irritated with me because he felt that men today were made to feel like they have to make the first move and that is unfair because "we aren't mindreaders" blah blah blah. I am not saying that at all but honestly, beginning to start anew with someone is more than mildly terrifying to me at this point. i feel as if I was reaching for something and my hand was repeatedly slapped away to the point where I know better now...I anticipate the sting so I don't feel the need to try. He is kind...he was always kind. The life I thought I wanted for myself really wasn't the life I needed. I am much to independent and that ubiquitous characteristic will always be the first thing any intelligent man will see. Is that the reason I told my ex that if we ever lived together that I would need my own room? Do I really do much better on my own? I have proved this already by fighting fiercely for what I have now. Do I really need a companion to help make my life more vibrant and meaningful? No, I don't think so. I have always wanted a lover who was my friend; I have only had this once before. After many years of hurt and anger I have finally let it go and now we talk regularly on the phone and it is much more fulfilling to me than his lust obsessions of the past ever were.
I can remember laying in my bed on an insanely sweltering summer day listening to Etta James on my player, thinking about him. Wondering when I would see him again if only to smile and have him smile back, hazel eyes dazzling me like diamonds. I think this is all a moot point, I love him and he loves me and yet maybe we would just be better off never acknowledging this to each other.

Self-made homemaker

I am 7/10ths of the way through the home buying process and wow what a mindfuck it's been thus far. I was warned...warned and lectured and warned some more and realistically I think I have had it easy-ish compared to other horror stories I have heard. Let's re-cap shall we?

8/12:
 A. Start the home search, see the "perfect condo" but it is just too expensive for me right now.
 B. Move on to other spaces; find one in the coveted "Avenues" neighborhood. I take Oma to see it and she flips out in a major way. She hated the building, thought the Avenues were dangerous (which is beyond ridiculous), hated the windows, hated the living room, hated the price (which was affordable and I had already been pre-approved).
9/12:
 C. Because she saw the alternative she decided that she did in fact like the other, way expensive condo (See Fig. A) so she decides to tell me 3 weeks later "I guess I can give you your inheritance money now so you can get the other place." WHAT!? You KNEW I couldn't afford that place for WEEKS and NOW you decide you want to help because you saw what was realistic for me. So, of course, the other unit already had an offer on it and the owner had countered and they are probably closing on it right this very bloody minute. Thanks Oma.
 D. I decided I needed a break. A break meant looking at a cottage in a shitty neighborhood.
 E. Just when I had given up real hope of ever living downtown and playing out my fantasy of a warped, punk rock version of a Charlotte/Samantha SATC lifestyle: IT APPEARS.
 F. I went out with a guy named Brian who used to live in the building. We worked at Starbucks together, he was a divorced bisexual (or so he told me). Whatever, anyway:
I walk in and the first thing I think is "1970's Treehouse." Vaulted ceilings, orange Preway floating woodstove, floor to ceiling windows, cast iron tub, new carpet and tile. Two blocks away from TRAX, across the street from all I will ever really need. What is the price? PERFECT. Was my offer accepted? YES. Just as I was about to float away on my cloud of homeownership, a terrible hurricane blew through in the form of inept loan officers and office assistants.

10/12:

 G. First it was "Oh you missed one hour of work on your paystub and the underwriter doesn't think you are really, truly gainfully employed for forty hours a week...so your mom needs to cosign." Then it was "Oh the realtor quoted the taxes incorrectly, they are really $200 more a year." Then it was "Oops we emailed you another couples paperwork and we sent them yours (real response from a grown ass woman coming up...wait for it) MY BAD!" After that it was "So, it turns out they made a mistake in your VOE form and your mom probably didn't really need to cosign for you...your credit score is better than hers..." and the BEST one of all!? "So, um, it turns out that 30% of the people who live there are renters and 70% are owners and we really don't think the condo is warrantable (READ: they don't think they can finance me), we would like the ratios to be 80/20..." After feeling like I am going to break the neck of the Listing Agent my mortgage company decided "Weeelllll, I guess we can make an exception...maybe." So I had the inspection done and the appraiser is coming next week. God willing nothing else stupid as shit happens I should be closing on November 19 and I swear to god the minute I get those keys in my hand I will run my ass over there and collapse on the carpet and cry for how this year has been. What I did and what I left behind and what I gave up for this piece of mind.



I want to come home to serenity. I want to make a cup of tea and coax a fire and sprawl on my $$$ofa I prematurely bought myself from Macy's. I want to have guests who can sleep in a real guest room and not an air mattress in the living room. I want the only thing I utter words too be Baby Kitty if I feel like it. I can't wait to have a special SLC DRUNCH! in my new place, making finger sandwiches and pouring shots of Jameson in the leaded crystal cordial glasses my parents got as a wedding present. I have such plans for it, I just have to hurry up and wait at this point.