I entertain myself, at least.

Writing a letter to my best friend tonight, this is how it started:

“Dear Dr. Love,
I started with this long email giving you the back story before I posed a question.
And then I realized it was like beating a dead horse.
So I started it again.
And I was beating another dead horse.
I am a dead horse beater.

Five times, I started this email, and now there are five dead horses on my bedroom floor. It isn’t the elephant in the room I worry about- it’s the smell of decaying horse flesh.”

Wrapped up together, in the corner booth.

Because of my one drink minimum, I sat for an hour last night sipping on melted ice water with a hint of vodka.
If I walked to the bar to get a coke, I’d just cave and order another, so I just kept making that annoying slurping noise through the straw, before finally deciding it was time to go home.

I had gone to meet up with Josh, but he’d disappeared at some point, so I set out to find him. He was hiding in the corner booth, a full beer sitting on the table next to his hat, looking miserable.

I did the only thing I could think of, and curled in next to him, with my head on his shoulder, and my hand on his leg. Not asking for words, but just being there for him. I adopted this trick with Sam, the art of Just Being There. Not saying anything, not asking for anything. Just sitting quietly, with my hand on his leg and my head on his shoulder. I don’t fix Sam’s problems, that isn’t my job. I just listen while he works it out. When he starts talking, I stay silent. When he trails off, I lead him with his own words, rephrased as a question.

It isn’t for me, it’s for him. Because that’s what love is, isn’t it? That’s what friends do. They don’t try to work you out like a puzzle, they don’t try to push their agenda. They’re just there. Listening.

Josh looked like that was exactly what he needed, and eventually, he started talking.

“I began job searching again. Slowly. I can’t do this anymore. I’m tired of being broke. I’ve tried to make the best of unemployment. I can’t do it anymore.”
“What can’t you do?”
“This. Being here every night. Not traveling. Not doing what I want. It was nice for awhile, but there’s more to life. I remember there used to be more to life.”

He trailed off, and pushed the glass across the table with his finger, playing with my hair. I needed to leave for home, I still had a twenty minute walk ahead of me.

“It will get better, you know. It’ll work out.”
“I know.”

I left him, and the whole walk home I was thinking:
“There is more to life than this. But I’m not ready.”

Being ready means leaving Sam. It means walking away from my friends, who are basically family. It means saying ‘thanks, but I’m going out to find better now.”
I’m not ready to upheave my life again- but if I could bring all my friends with me, if we could all succeed instead of just one of us…
I’d change everything in a heartbeat.

Vacation to Before.

My friend and I scheduled to meet up last night for drinks in my old neighborhood. Having had a series of rain checks every time we try to get together, I hopped on the #2 bus and headed over. Hoping, of course, that the smell of homeless-back-of-the-bus-urination didn’t seep into my clothes on the way.

For this reason alone, I miss my car.

“You smell like the inside of my mom’s purse.”

Check. Homeless urination smell thwarted. Though I had to clarify that the inside of his mom’s purse smelled good, and not the typical Retired-in-Miaimi-Smells-Like-Daily-Vitamin Supplements-and-Used-Tissues kind of mom’s purse.
No, I just smelled like home.
Not the strangest compliment I’ve ever heard, but definitely one worth remembering.

I had plans to head to my favorite bar after, but one thing led to another and before I knew it, I missed the last bus, he was drunk and we were watching News Radio at his place and he burned his hand on the yummy margarita pizza he baked.

Here’s the thing.
I used to care about decorating. All the time. I was always reconstructing some corner of my apartment, rescuing furniture from alleys, reconverting, repainting, repairing. I gave that up when I moved into my new place, since aside from my bedroom, it’s all fully furnished… in a decorating style that is so awful the only thing I can think to do is burn it all and start over.

Not my stuff, can’t burn it, it belongs to one of my roommates.

But my friend’s studio… holy shit. I walked in and my jaw dropped. I mean…. Holy shit. It looked like he hired my mom to design the place (the highest of compliments I can give, actually). I wanted to snap photos and send them to her for inspiration. I was in some kind of weird alternate universe. A straight man? Can do this? With that? And… and… This was what MY studio would look like. MINE. Not his. MINE. If I had a higher budget, anyway.

Oh, thank god we weren’t hanging out in my neighborhood.
If we’d gone back to my place, I would have died of embarrassment. With my yellowed nicotine walls, and all my furniture left over from the eight rooms I used to have- now all thrown into one with twelve different color schemes.

His bathroom even smelled like a hotel. A fancy paid-too-much-money-for-one-night hotel. MY old bathroom used to be like that.
He and I shop at the same beat up architectural salvage place. I did not tell him about my secret flea market- that’s mine, and mine alone.
Not even my mother knows about it.

Highs and lows.

We are a starving artist cliché, every one of us. All with mixed specialties, but the core of it is that we’re all broke.
We’re all miserable.
And not so secretly, we all like being miserable.

Helen said it the other night, “I am addicted to heartbreak.”
At sixteen, she ran off New Orleans, found her first love. He was 28, and would just disappear for days with no word. He’d show up four or five days later, strung out from a weeklong coke binge, and tell her he couldn’t live without her. He’d be back for awhile, before taking off again without saying anything.
Each time he left, she’d spend the week tearing the city apart trying to find him, panicking.
Later, near the end, she discovered he was turning tricks for rich men so that he could afford his lifestyle.
“He had been Tennessee William’s cabin boy when he was seventeen. He had all these love letters from him, signed ‘love, Tom’. Beautiful letters, the man could write a love letter.”

She referenced this story as proof that once you get introduced to that up and down rollercoaster of dramatic flares, you can’t let it go. And you spend your whole life repeating it.
It influences you. It pushes you to get all of it out of your system. It gives you a rush of edge.
And you can’t stop.
If you do stop, if you do find something healthy, someone healthy-
What do you write about? What do you paint? What makes you pick up the guitar and spill out your soul?
Isn’t that what art is? The inability to keep something inside anymore, so you try and create something that eases all the feelings in your chest. It’s just temporary; you can’t get rid of it indefinitely. But creating something relieves the pressure.

You create something that shows your insides to other people, who can look at it and relate to it. They can say “yes, know where you’re coming from. I identify. I identify with you.”

We are easily bored. When we’re bored, we walk away to find something better.
When we are heartbroken, we can be dramatic.
When we are upset, we can channel it.
When we are happy, we’re practically glowing and have the world at our feet.
We can pull in experiences, we can find new ones.

We can turn it into something beautiful, something uniquely ours, something that we file away to think about when we’re in a retirement home.

We like being an emotional rollercoaster.
What we can’t figure out, is how to be stable, and not lose our edges.

Or maybe we’re just all a bipolar fucking mess, and need anti-depressants.

Want list.

Every once in awhile, I make up a list of “Wants”. Here’s the most recent:

1. Ryan Adams’ tour poster.

Actually, right now that’s kind of it.
My birthday is coming up.
Hint, hint.

Oh, the annual freak out.

From July 15^th-August 15^th every year, I spend each day in a panic attack.

This is what happens when I procrastinate for twelve months, and don’t check off my To-Do list.

Last year, I started something new: When I start panicking, I sit down and write out my accomplishments.

I’m getting better at the self affirmations- and lucky me, I can check that off my list.

Masochistic at best.

Every so often, I’m reminded that my Significant-Non-Significant other cares about me. It’s a whole sordid story I’m sure I’ve explained to death, but the whole thing just makes me feel guilty.  Like last night:

Exhibit 65:

“Wait… how are you getting home? My passenger seat is full of instruments.”
“I’ll cab it.”
“What?”
“I’m a grown ass woman. I can hail a fucking cab.”
He looked like he was going to cry.
“Sam, it’s FINE.”
“Let me at least give you cab money.”
“Don’t you dare. Are you positive you’re okay to drive?”

He was not okay to drive. We both knew it. The smart thing would have been to both cab back home together, but after nine months, I’ve learned to throw my hands up and just use them to pray he gets home safely.

I didn’t mean to make him feel like an asshole, but this is what happens when I assume we’re a “normal” couple. You know- two people who left their baggage behind and can have a healthy relationship.
We are not those people, not even remotely close.

$25 and a friendly Ethiopian later, I was on the phone with my girlfriend at 2:30 in the morning, swiveling back and forth in circles in my desk chair while she told me I deserved better.

“Helen, he’s texting me.”
“Don’t you dare text him back. You’re better than that.”
“Right. Yeah. No, you’re right.”
“Let him worry. Don’t you text him. You hang up the phone, and go to sleep.”

I hung up.
Swivel. Swivel. Swivel.
I couldn’t bring myself to let him worry about me.

So of course, I texted.
And then, oh, just guess which idiot of us threw on her shoes, grabbed her keys and walked the not-so-safe mile over to his apartment at 3am?

It doesn’t take rocket science to figure that one out- just a bit of foreshadowing.

My favorite part was when I got there, and the warped door that was supposed to be unlocked was jammed shut, and I can see him through the window passed out naked on his bed, and he isn’t waking up to the phone ringing next to his ear.

Boy, did that feel good.
Next time I have to throw rocks at a man’s bedroom window, I need a little voice to tell me “keep the pebbles in your pocket.”

Disrupted routines.

I’m extremely routine oriented when I’m home.

For instance:

Wake up, barely. Grab the laptop off the floor, light a cigarette, check my morning emails. –It helps when my friends either wake up early, or live in a future time zone.

Re-read Alex’s email six times until I’m coherent enough to understand it. Move on to the rest of them. Put out my cigarette, head to the kitchen for caffeine. Respond to all emails.

Free write. Journal.

Get out of bed, bathroom, clean kitchen, feed the cat, crawl back under the covers and research geography and whatever subject I’ve decided to learn about that day. Maybe head to work, though usually not until I’ve checked all my writer friends new posts. Chat with one of my roommates on the way out the door.

Work. Leave after a couple of hours, head home to write, read and research. Cook dinner, watch an episode of whatever show I’m in love with. Shower. Chat with friends on the phone, emails emails emails. Text the best friend, call my mother, wonder what my Significant Other is doing. Don’t call him. Redecorate, clean, stare at the cracks in my ceiling. Water the plant. Make a To-Do list. Edit the morning’s work. Grab my iPod and walk two neighborhoods over to my favorite bar. Stop in at the coffee shop on the way and write for an hour or so. Bar. Hang out with friends, play cat and mouse with the Significant Other, leave the bar between 3-4am, grab Mexican food, and figure out how we’re getting home.

There are variations on this, but three days a week, this is exactly what I do.

It’s nice, almost, if I weren’t so bored I wanted to pull my hair out by the roots.
And of course, I can’t help but think: “This?! This is going to be the rest of my life??”

It won’t be, of course, I’m just stuck in the in-between.
A very calm, productive in-between.

Again with the again?

My jeep is my baby. Really. If I had to choose between my cat and my car…
The cat would maybe survive.
Maybe.
But it would be a really close call.

Exhibit 34:

Me: “Sam, there are two things I love most in this world. My cat, and my car.”
Him: “You know you’re eventually going to have to let one of them go.”
Me: “Then it will be my cat. Because I am damn straight determined to make that jeep survive another 14 years.”
Him: “That’s kind of fucked up.”

It isn’t that fucked up. If my cat dies, there really isn’t anything I can do about it.
If my car dies, I have five mechanics on my speed dial.
That isn’t to say I don’t love my cat as much as a hunk of metal. But I’ve had a lot of cats- I’ve only had one car.

Sam and I were having one of our infamous “off” nights. We forgot to leave our walls at home, and those nights never end well. He’s defensive, I’m defensive because he’s defensive. We’re both out with mutual different friends, and our friends just stand and look at each other like they’re caught between an earthquake and a firestorm.

Horoscope metaphors.
Appreciate.

Sam took one of our friends home, while I went to sober up. By the time I headed for the car, an hour later…
Dead.
Try again.
Still dead.
Try seven more times.
More dead.

I’ve been preparing for this to happen for the last three weeks, ever since it started stalling randomly while I was driving.
It’s an automatic.
They don’t stall.
And I’d just spent $200 last week on a new battery.

I texted Sam, and started walking home.In heels. Through hooker territory.
Click, click, click.
It was like being a walking target at three in the morning.
I hate being a walking target, more than anything.
Sam was already home, safe and drunk, and now worrying about me.
I told him to stay put, though his offer of rescuing me was precious.

Thank goodness the car died where it did. It picked my favorite neighborhood, in a section where I didn’t have to worry about street sweeping in the morning.
It was a very peaceful place to go, surrounded by trees and other cars and the occasional nice pedestrian.

The next morning, I walked back over (in sneakers) and had it towed down to my mom’s.
So now my mom has my car AND my cat, and I have… hmm.
My iPod.

It’s the small things in life, really.
Like the tow truck driver being smokin’ hot, and the fact that I have a stellar music collection.

She actually said the words “…this is an intervention.”

I got… an intervention?

For the past five years, ever since that incident at that Halloween party, I’ve been sober. The running joke between all of my closest friends has been to get me drunk, stoned, or otherwise inebriated. They always thought it would be funny.
I finally gave a little leeway a couple years ago, and would have one drink when I went out. Something light, that I could nurse for three to four hours at a time.
It meant I didn’t have to explain every thirty seconds why I was at a bar without drinking.
If I got to the end of the night without finishing the drink, I’d just dump it down the toilet or leave it on a table somewhere.

This worked great for me, right up until a few months ago, when I threw in the towel.
Don’t date an alcoholic. Don’t date an alcoholic. Don’t date an alcoholic.

This is in no way saying anything bad about Sam.
It’s just… friendly advice.
Oh, and if you do- like me- find yourself dating an alcoholic, don’t go with the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” method.

Helen and I were going to meet up the other night.
“Bar?”
“Uh… No. You’ve been drinking a little too much lately. You need to maybe take some time off.”
I was confused. I mean… yes. I had found myself in an alleyway in my underwear the other night, sitting in the gravel and talking to stray cats because the world was spinning and Sam’s bedroom was too hot… but that’d been the first time I’d been actually “drunk” in months.

And I blamed it on that last shot of Jameson.
Which, when I did the bar tab math, had been my twelfth drink on an empty stomach.
This is the point where I went:
“wait. I was sitting in an alley in my underwear.
In the exact spot Sam used as a bathroom, whenever he didn’t want to go upstairs.
In my underwear.
In an alley.
In weeds and gravel.
Talking to stray cats.
While Sam was passed out drunk in bed.
And then I got dressed, snuck out, and walked a mile home trash drunk to pass out fully clothed.”

I’d like to note, with some misplaced pride here, that I never once threw up that night.

Point to Helen. I’ve been drinking too much lately.
I’ve decided to put some healthier limits on my nights out- especially because I’m out 6 to 7 nights a week.

Mondays and Wednesdays… free nights.
Every other night, one drink maximum.

I have to say, it kind of blows.