J

Homeward Bound

Posted by diana

How, in a house of my brethren can there be so few pens? And then maybe, I think, they aren’t my brethren in that way. In the pen and the paper and the ink and the ideas swirling away into bits of paper.

Maybe they’re my brethren simply by blood. Which isn’t simple, is it? Never is. Brethren by blood or by choice. Considering epigenetics, in this case the two are inseparable. But that’s considering epigenetics, and I am far too looped out on Ambien to do so coherently at the moment.

Consider Phlebus.

Or don’t. I rarely do.

Consider Ragnar taking up a quarter of his bed, watching me whenever I move in case I leave while he wasn’t looking. He won’t even eat his breakfast anymore, he’s too busy watching to make sure I don’t duck out while he’s eating.

I owe him something. An environment where he can relax. Where I am less stressed. Where it’s okay to not always be on the run, always getting things done by the skin of my teeth. Always on the verge of collapse because, in addition to my personal goals, I want to give those around me whatever it is they want from me. That last one…. that needs a full on revamping.

With J, I could not be the out doorsy, studiously productive cynical girl he needed. I tried. I managed cynical. Instead of studious I did obsessive; he didn’t like me when I was obsessive.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love him a great deal, and probably will for a long time. And I still miss him something fierce. But I’m much happier on a day to day basis, able to recall the fun we had, how madly & quickly we fell for each other, how so many things about us just *fit*.

But if you’re trying to be what the other person wants… and you don’t even know who you are… sigh… The person he wanted, she’s a good person. Someone I’d have fun with, someone I’d admire. But not me. I’m not interested in scuba diving, or getting drunk, or week long camping trips.

I owe Ragnar, and I owe myself, a home. A safe space in which only our interactions matter. And the cats. A home, together, the three of us. I owe us all a home without constant judgment and criticism. Without a constant looming disapproval. Without the sense that the other shoe hasn’t dropped yet. A home that is ours. It will be my home by all outward measures. But ours. No one else gets to complain when Kayla projectile vomits off the top of the bookcase. No one else gets to point out how many knots are in Marx’s fur, but then refuse to help shave them out. No one else gets to look down on Ragnar — on *my* dog — and complain about his behavior.

Because, for fuck’s sake, he’s a dog. He gets paw prints on things. He sometimes smells funny. He eats things you don’t even want to think about. He wants to sniff your butt, and your butt, and everybody’s butts. But. His home. Where he will not be punished for being a dog. He will be trained and disciplined, and the fact that he waits for permission before getting on the bed will be acknowledged. And that he rings bells when he wants to go outside will be admired for the awesomeness it is.

He will be appreciated in his own home.

I would like to be appreciated in my own home.

I would like my own home, and I haven’t had any space I could truly call mine since college. For a while, I thought I had that at Tortuga. But, no. Shoes dropped. Judgments got made. Suddenly, it wasn’t a safe space to come home to. It was a place to walk on eggshells and then attempt to read tea leaves to figure out whatever the fuck was going on.

And so. I want a home of my own. And it’s looking like I’ll have one, soon.

Pending signing the lease and handing over the deposit, my family and I will be moving into a three bedroom house in the east bay. One with a ginormous backyard where Ragnar can bound and leap. And there will be cat shelves. Oh, yes. I will put up cat shelves in every room so the cats can circumnavigate the house without ever once having to be on the ground with Ragnar unless they want to.

I will have a home.

 

Oh. And my home will be entirely gluten free. No gluten shall enter. Ever. So I will never have to fear contamination and illness in my own home.

All of which is a rambly and emotional way of saying I may have a place for the menagerie and me within the next week or so.

 

Extra Lizard is to be Expected

Posted by diana

As both my mother and Joe have both reminded me recently, I’m at a tough time in my life right now. I keep forgetting that. It’s not as if I think what I’m going through is easy, precisely. More that because it’s me, well, I expect me to pull it together and soldier on. But if it were a friend of mine… Ending a five year long relationship is hard. No matter why you end it. No matter how amicable. The fact of the matter is that something that’s been a huge and potentially definitive part of your life has ended. I miss J. A lot. But what hurts most is the loss of the future we’d planned.

Photo by Ronardios

I had a moment of insecurity over something silly the other day. I knew it was silly, but sometimes the reptile brain kicks in and can’t be swayed. I joked with Joe that I had this image of a bright green lizard at a fork in the road, scuttling back and forth to peer down each path but not choosing either.

That’s when Joe reminded me that I had been dealing with a lot of emotional turmoil and change. “Extra lizard is to be expected,” he said.

So.

After Changes Upon Changes, and We are More or Less the Same

Posted by diana

I moved out a month ago.

I’m back in Tortuga-the intentional community that just won’t let me go, and am I glad of it! I’m even back in the same unit as before, although a different room. And this time with Ragnar, who is delighted to be here. All these neighbors who want to play with him: friendly people who take him for walks while his person is away at work. It’s good.

It wasn’t easy moving out of the home J and I had been sharing for three years. But it’s become clear, to me certainly, that living together right now does us a disservice.

I am changing a lot, and J… well, J likes everything to be neat and controlled. He doesn’t understand the decisions I’m making. They seem reckless, or inefficient to him.

There’s this moment in the Runaway Bride… Throughout the movie, Gere’s character asks all of Roberts’ exes how she liked her eggs for  breakfast. The answer was different each time, on the surface. Scrambled, poached, sunnyside up… The answer was always that her favorite egg dish was the same as that of her boyfriend at the time. He liked scrambled, she liked scrambled.

There is a scene at the end of the movie where Roberts tries every type of egg dish she can come up with, to learn which one she actually likes.

I feel like I’ve always been living on someone else’s paradigm. Parents, friends, significant others… My identity has always been as part of a unit. Which means changes in me that might change the dynamic of that unit are terrifying. Taking a role other than “daughter” who is “cared for” and “toes the family line”… that threatens not just my sense of myself within the family, but the entire family. Enmeshment, my therapist tells me, is what this is called.

Enmeshment. Strands of identity woven so tightly with those of the people around you, that it’s impossible to tell where some pieces came from. Apparently that scene from Runaway Bride, which is by far the best scene in the movie, is frequently used in psych courses to exemplify enmeshment and the process of leaving it.

So, right now, I’m figuring out how I like my eggs. With no regard for how J likes his, or how my mother and father like theirs. And, of course, I mean more than eggs here. Everything. I’m figuring out what matters to me. What I like.

It’s not precisely the same thing as finding yourself. I’ve been here all along. But I’ve been wound so tight in group identities, I haven’t had a chance to think or make changes.

As hard as this is for me, it’s even harder for J. He doesn’t understand what’s going on. Doesn’t fully get the enmeshment issue. Doesn’t understand why, suddenly, his partner is making choices he dislikes and refusing to give in on them. Not easy to live with.

So I’ve moved back to Tortuga. And J still lives at Church St, as do the cats, as does most of my stuff. And I still go there on a regular basis. But I can’t live with J right now. Not if we want to have any kind of chance of making things work between us.

They say you need to love yourself before you love others… I call BS

Posted by diana

Cubby Selby used to say that the reason cliches exist is because they’re often true. I think, maybe, we’ve learned that cliche = turn your brain off.

They say before you can love anyone else, you first need to love yourself. Which has always struck me as ridiculous. You can love someone else with a desperate ferocity without ever loving yourself: witness my mother’s absolute dedication to both my brother and me. She never, in her entire life, loved herself. I think she’s learning to, now. I think the cancer made her examine herself and what she wants more closely. If not love herself, I think she’s beginning to at least value herself.

I don’t think my father has ever really loved himself, either.  But he loves my mother, my brother, me, Uncle Stan, the dogs. It’s a small group, but he would do almost anything for any one of us. I don’t know if he’s learning to love himself or not. It’s a bit harder to tell. But I think he’s learning to accept himself. He apologized to me for the way he treated me during my childhood. Completely on his own, he apologized to me.

To be able to look back and see that about himself, and then not only realize he wronged me, but to actually make the apology unprompted… That’s pretty amazing.

It’s no secret to those who love me that I’m not particularly fond of myself. Remember that sketch I posted of myself at seven? I picked that particular picture to draw because of how much hatred I felt towards that little girl.

Tonight, walking Ragnar, I was listening to the audio version of Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself (which is a pretty damned awesome book). Something Alda said at the end about knowing your own values struck me. I wish I knew what it was in particular that made it hit home. I’ve certainly heard plenty of variations of essentially the same advice. But something did strike me.

I tried to figure out what I valued. Family? Partnership? Dogs? Writing? Which did I spend the most time doing? Well, I spend the most time worrying about things and trying to come up with absolutely perfect solutions (yay OCD!). I don’t want that to be my value. But I was really startled that I didn’t know the hierarchy of the things I valued. And then it occurred to me, well, I don’t much value myself so why would I have even cared what things mattered to me? Of course I didn’t know. Because it didn’t matter.

No, I’m not saying it doesn’t matter. But that I’ve felt that way. And then that line of thought went even further. Each of those potential values I listed is a partnership: my parents, my boyfriend, my dog, my (possibly entirely imaginary) audience. In each case, I only value half of the equation. So why would I even care what happened to the other half–in this case–me?

The answer is I don’t. Or I didn’t. Gah. All this self actualization language is so imprecise… can I tell you how much I hate using lifecoach-y sounding terms? I hate it. Possibly as much as Gollum hated Samwise. Or maybe it was as much as Samwise hated Gollum…

Imagine you’re making a meal for two people. One, you care deeply about. The other, you don’t. In fact, the other you may even actively dislike. But you put up with that other because, after all, if they hadn’t shown up there wouldn’t be this dinner. Person A happens to love kale, and brownies, and pasta. Person B likes pasta, but isn’t so much into the dark leafy greens and doesn’t like chocolate (blasphemy!). So what do you make? Pasta, kale, brownies. Hey, Person A gets everything they want while Person B at least gets one thing they like!

(BTW, you’re Person B.)

Aside from this making you a bad host… the math is wrong. Person A isn’t getting what they want at all. Person A is here for dinner with Person B. How can Person A be happy if their friend is getting shortchanged?

Now let’s take away the theoretical dinner and go back to those values. If I value my family but I don’t value myself and take care of myself–my family won’t be happy. Same with my partner, or my dog (I would treat myself like shit, which would affect all of them), or my possibly imaginary audience (which, you know, might not be imaginary if I valued myself and therefore dedicated more time and focus to my writing. And, uhm, sent editors stories when they asked me for them…).

Both sides of the equation need to be considered. A + B isn’t equal to A. It’s impossible to have a relationship with someone who isn’t there, or is intermittently there. And it is impossible, as that person who self negates, to build anything lasting and healthy.

You can love someone else while not loving yourself, but you’re not going to do a very good job at it.

In Which Job Hunting is a lot Like Dating, Number 1

Posted by diana

Freelancing has made it even more obvious to me that job hunting and dating really have a lot in common. Even more so if you look at internet dating sites (which I have, that’s how J and I got together. And Rayhawk and I before that, and…. Right. Internet dating, it works.)

As ever, we come back to Communication. Which is how one sets Expectations.

You don’t know very much about the other party when you enter into contact. You have a vague sense:

“Oh, yeah. This company focuses on video games and they’re looking for a copywriter who knows the field. Awesome. That’s totally me.”

Which is a lot like:

“Hey, this guy is an engineer who’s into hiking and looking for a geeky girl who likes old Alec Guinness movies. Awesome. That’s totally me.”

All of which certainly merits some investigation. An email. A phone call. A preliminary interview. But really, you know nearly nothing about the other party. Just some extremely basic info. You have no idea how organized they are, how laid back, how they behave under stress. Nor do they know those things about you; you’re both on your best behavior. Neither of you have any real sense of what to expect.

I’ve found that a lot of companies don’t know how to express what they want. They’ll often just expect you to know. When I taught, I used to call this being writer-based, not reader-based. They know the info so well themselves, it doesn’t occur to them that they need to explain it to anyone else. Communication fail.

When pressed for more details, they might say something like, “It needs more pizazz. Some zing.” Which is completely meaningless. It’s like a girl saying to a guy, “I want you to be more romantic.” There’s nothing actionable in there. Define for me pizazz. Show me a picture of zing. Quantify romance.

I find going to the pinball hall of fame with my partner romantic. A friend of mine thinks going out to a fancy restaurant is romantic. Still another thinks going to a rave together is the height of romance. Good luck figuring out which one of those things to do when all the girl says is “I want more romance.”

So pizazz and zing and romance are all pretty vague. For that particular gig I eventually figured out that if I wrote the copy like it was porn, the CEO liked it. (No, I’m not telling which company).

Heck, I like it when a guy gives me flowers. But not red roses. Try predicting that.

And here’s one of those things that just completely sucks; the other party decides that, because you didn’t get it perfect on the first try, you’re a horrible person or not The One or you just don’t love them enough.

This actually hasn’t happened to me in romance. I think that’s more of a chick thing than a dude thing. Usually. And man, I’ve been guilty of it. Having now dealt with employers who’ve done that (and no, not telling you which company)… It’s awful. And unfair. And totally ignores the fact that human beings are really kinda designed to learn and evolve.

When a company, or a romantic interest, does that, you have to figure that’s a big red flag. You’re getting yourself involved with someone (or something) that communicates like a toddler. Or an 18 year old (amazingly similar, those two). Which means drama. And, you know, maybe it’s worth it. Maybe the perks make the job worthwhile. Or maybe the other person is just so hot, you can’t pass that up. At some point down the line, you’ll end up telling stories about the whole experience and shaking your head ruefully.

So, when J recently got me a bouquet of six red roses and one white one, I thanked him for them. And I felt loved. Because, dude, the effort was there. And I’d never told him, “Red roses, not so much.” And I made sure to tell him that the white rose was my absolute favorite of the bunch.

What do you want to bet I start getting more white roses?

And the angels sang…

Posted by diana

PUPPY!

Ahem.

We adopted a dog.

Back at the end of March I predicted that it would take me six months of steady campaigning to convince Jason we should adopt a dog. In truth, it only took five months. We adopted Arthur/Ragnar at the end of August. He’s part mastiff, possibly part boxer or lab, and at the moment he’s snoring, crashed out on the floor by my feet.

He’s a smart pup, though a bit skittish. We’re working on that and seeing major improvements.

You know what the trick was? To convincing Jason? Finding a big enough dog. Which makes sense when you consider that the only dog he has ever liked is a friend’s Great Dane.

Meet Ragnar, named in honor of a Norse pirate-king:

Ragnar hiding behind the driver’s seat of my car.
Sprawled on the kitchen floor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In case you were wondering, he’s at most 10 months old and weighs 75lbs. We’re hoping he’ll at least top 100lbs by the time he’s full grown.

Puppy love

Posted by diana

I desperately want a dog.

J is not so sure about this.

In fact, J is sure he *doesn’t* want a dog. But he realizes that being with me may mean he has to have a dog. So we began talking about it last night. I brought it up (of course). I asked what things would have to happen or change within the next six months in order for him to be comfortable with me getting a dog. He’s not very good at articulating it; all he can really say is what he doesn’t want, which isn’t the same thing. But I’ve got him thinking along the right lines, I hope.

I pointed out that he could use it as incentive to get me cleaning more. My messiness drives him batshit, and we’ve been working on it since before we moved in together. “However,” I said, “if you do use it that way, that means we really do have to get a dog.”

“I know,” he said. “No bait and switch.”

And I’ve been looking up dog breeds. And today I looked up the local shelters. And I have, of course, already fallen in love with half a dozen puppies. None of which we’ll get. But this guy, this guy is the one I keep coming back to:

Isn’t he lovely? He’s at a shelter in San Jose.