picture perfect: this is how my mind works

I've just spent more than an hour looking at design sites, featuring homes that are flooded with light and good taste, and i am sitting in my very cold, unstylish, basement.

We've been rolling right along here:working, watching tv, going to classes, judah-- so much demands lots of my attention. especially project runway!

i sometimes think i need to write a letter to my dad, that i need to get my thoughts out on paper. But seriously, would i ever finish that letter? it would be so long!
I have even tried just putting a few thoughts down, but one thought just leads to another and i can't seem to organize my thoughts. i am not satisfied with them when i re-read them.

I know he must be so sad and angry at me. I feel bad about that.

i'm sad we're broken up. i am sad in a way that... if i really think about it. . .i can start to cry and stop breathing and hear my heart beating in my ears.
my life is so f*ing messy- it is. and most of the time i am so frustrated that it is. i haven't come to terms with my life being what it is. I haven't come to terms with myself because, you and i both know, i am the reason that my life is the way that it is. I am profoundly messy- loosest of ends and feeling so threadbare-- i will not be able to cover my wreckage with my best efforts.
and i don't feel that my path is heading anywhere anymore. or, maybe, i feel i have been on this special and trying path to get somewhere but that when i get there, wherever There is, i will not have what i need to make it my There. I do not have the goods. I don't.

i guess i am rethinking the rethinking. What was the question? What i am doing with Chris?!
Chris is the first time i ever knew something didn't add up about me. Before him, everything made enough sense. But my falling for Chris was just weird, from the leftest of fields, he is just Other than anyone would have had for me and even i sometimes still wonder at what he means. Anti-thesis of all my former ideas. Opposite soul-fabric. Suddenly i have married a Dreamer.

Everything happened at night.
I can recall the privacy of my room, i can recall not wanting to be interrupted there. I can remember the retreat into my own world: mirrors and windows. shade and trees. i can remember nights on the picnic bench in front of my house and stars shining through the branches. My night and private self chose her husband. This is not a fictionalization, an enhancement through hyperbolic imagery. This is the closest thing to Truth i can tell about it.
That very private self i barely saw because She was not as yet connected to anyone or anything. Only in my room. only on my own. An un-self-concsious self .But now...
The choice to marry Chris was the first move toward being let out of that tower of privacy.
And sometimes, i just want to go back.

The person i was before Chris had no real hopes or dreams but I didn't have to worry about anything. Now i worry about everything.

i try not to.

And you'd given me up for dead!

okay, so i am back from a visit to Chris's parents. The low light was something i think it wouldn't be fair to print and the highlight was going to have steak where i used to waitress. My word: that is the best steak i've ever had.

The trip afforded me a golden opportunity to be by myself, when the house was sleeping and still. I journaled eight pages, lists and drawings. I made plans, resolutions, maps and schedules. i felt whole for the first time in a long time. I felt unto myself, present and it was so needed. It almost felt like a spell and the saddest part about it is that it will almost certainly be broken.

I know that i do the breaking myself. I "check-out" all the time. I detach, as some sort of defense, but i do it so often i can't begin to guess why. The idea is that if you go back to when you checked out, right before it, then you can identify what triggers the defense mechanism.

My first guess is that my messy townhouse is making me check out. I hate it cluttery and messy. Maybe that is why cleaning it always feels so enlightenting.

Speaking of, i have lots of cleaning to do.

Did you know that i kind of like Mary J Blige?

okay, fyi
1. today judah is sick and home from "school." He is most in touch with the fact that his health is ailing when i ask him to do things like kiss me or take his cup back to the kitchen.
2. Chris is off the next two days. YIP-ee. We're on a good stretch these days.
3. Obama, he is a Barack-ing my world.
4. Tote bags are my new thing. I just bought... three recently and i lurve 'em.
5. Organisation is also my new thing. king of.
6. British spellings come naturally to me and they always have.
7. weird, eh?
8. i just had my six month review and it went well. i am happy about it.
9. i love my classes at Wheaton and got an extension on my thesis.
10. If i could just straighten myself out enough, i could write two books.

Sick is not how i pictured it! or I like to think i would be Lucy Liu.

maybe it was the shots. I am sick! i don't get sick, really. I am the last to get sick My sister or roomate can get sick and i won't. Judah and Chris will be laid up with Ebola and i can go for a walk, come make them soup, snuggle them, and i am fine the whole time. I am the last to get sick.

usually.

I had another class today and it became apparent to me that i am much much older than lots of college kids. More than age, really, i am older in the sense that i have been around. I have been places. I have had judah and been with Chris for eight years. I have had the struggle of my life, it seems.

They are twenty-ish and look like the places they have been include and are limited to Wet Seal and Forever 21.
I am trying to remember not to be condescending but i am not sure it isn't natural...
in other news, my mom sent me earrings for no reason.
which created a minute but detectable shift of the earth on its axis. Polar bears can tell because they got a little more time to chase those seals we shouldn't be clubbing.
Really, who exactly clubs a baby seal? Why a club?
I digress, i know. The people in latin america noticed because their siestas inexplicably lasted one minute longer, with no effort on anyone's part.

The earrings are pretty and gold and came accompanied by a matching ring that i would like enough if it fit my proper finger.

pretty. i just don't know what it means.


___
and finally, Kristen, KRISTEN ARE YOU THERE? i am now watching Project Runway which is bound to make us grow oh so close. I like Sweet P.

I also watch a little bit of Cashmere Mafia.

Who is the fallen mighty now? I never get hooked on that stuff: sex and the c. or desperate housesluts. I never get pulled into this stuff. And i never get sick.

well, hardly.

the way up

i generally regard 2008 to be my year of The Climb... I sense i am at the foot of a mountain, the top will be my Actualized Life. I know, God help all his children who took too many psych classes!


I am so glad to be here. I feel like everything i am doing, and i am doing a LOT, is getting me closer to who i want to be. I know it. It is a conviction, my dears. So the work thing, it doesn't bother me. I can deal with my work.

Because it means I can go to my school. I am very very verrrry (roll the R) happy to be back at Wheaton, i love it! i had my first class today and i wanted to cry i felt so happy. But i didn't, i just smiled a lot.

I also got three shots today. I narrowly avoided a pap smear (rescheduled). the school keeps tabs on its students! the shots were mandatory. the physical is too. the pap is cause i am a big girl and know it is best for me... otherwise i would say no thanks.

Judah and i both go to school and he finds this really interesting. he likes to ask me if i get a play time or a nap time and i had to tell him that his school is way better than mine. no naps are scheduled, anyway.

i got an ipod for christmas.
good night.

2008

i have been a person who loves to make New Year's Resolutions. I love it.

Even when i am making simple changes, i'll wait for a sunday so that the change has a proper commencement.

But the turn of this year is different. I am a little spent on all the changes i have recently made to think that i can make some more changes.

though i would like to think so, but i can't even muster up the energy for a list.

and you know that all real sustaninable change begins with a list- nice penmanship increases the likelihood that it will come to pass, too.

No, I am not feeling change-y. i am not feeling like i can. or will.

i will probably just continue gaining weight.
and not finish my degree.
i will probably still be surrounded by my clutter twelve months from now
i will not have visited the chiropractor
nor the dentist
Judah will probably stay up past ten every night and
we'll eat from the frozen section
when we don't eat out
i won't exercise and then i will drop the ball on going to the Dells this summer because i refuse to get in a bathing suit
i won't save a dime or pay my bills on time.
i'll snack too much and blog too little.
i won't buy the Differin that my poor stressed out skin needs.

eeek! i have so much to do!

That said: some plans!


I will lose ten pounds by Febuary 14th. I will then lose another five by my birthday, March 13th. After i lose fifteen pounds, on my birthday, i will spend money on something nice for myself as a reward and a congratulations!
I will go out on a real date for Valentine's Day.

Judah will start going to bed on time again. On time is nine. NINE!!!
i will learn ten new recipes in five months.


I will visit the chiro and the dentist and, though i could definitely think of much more better ways to spend my time, i need to visit the gyno too. it is time.

i will love myself, trust myself, listen and learn myself.

change can happen even when I don't have the energy of a false sense of invincibility,