So I'm in this lovely relationship now, and sometimes I get really scared of it ending. I'm especially scared of it ending against my will because the last two times that happened I went through many months of feeling like shit before I finally felt like myself again.
The other day while I was driving, the song Lazy Eye by Silversun Pickups came on the radio. I froze. I was taken back in time to the fall of 2006 when I was in a new relationship with somebody I was really into and also heard this song on the radio. There is a line in the song that goes like this:
I've been waiting for this moment all my life but it's not quite right.
Back then, I didn't want it to be true and quickly pushed the thought away. But sure enough, shortly thereafter the guy I was really into broke up with me, and I was devastated.
When I heard the song again the other day, I was afraid that maybe it was true again in my current relationship. Once again I didn't want it to be true, but I also didn't want to be in denial about it if it was.
To my surprise and delight, the song that was playing on the radio this time was a remix! And it doesn't include the part about it not being quite right. All it says is
I've been waiting waiting waiting I've been waiting for this moment moment moment
I thanked the universe but also felt that it couldn't be quite this easy. Was this really a message that everything was okay in my relationship? Then today I had an epiphany. Everything IS okay because the moment I have been waiting for is not the relationship but my own current state of mind. Everything IS okay because my own strength, confidence and solidity are here to stay even if the relationship doesn't. Maybe something isn't quite right with the relationship--that remains to be seen--but that doesn't mean that my world and THIS MOMENT aren't right. At least that's my reading of the situation, and hopefully I'll still be able to feel right about this moment--any moment--even after the relationship is over. After having this epiphany I hugged the world.
This doesn't mean that I am not vulnerable and scared. I totally am. But the difference in the (uni)verse is that thanks to my newfound solidity, now I no longer practice self-hate. The self-hate is what was not quite right before. Next time I go through a break-up, instead of climbing a big mountain of suffering and self-hate, I hope to let myself fall into a wave of acceptance.
Recognizing the part I play in other people's bitchiness
Sometimes, when another person acts towards me a certain way, I may decide then and there that they're a bitch, and then in the future, every time I think of them and that situation, they remain a bitch in my mind.
Here are two examples of situations in which this happened recently.
1. I was at some friends' house for a big dinner party. I ran into a girl I didn't know in the hallway and introduced myself to her. Her name was Zeena*. I said "Oh, like Xena the warrior princess? Isn't there one called that?" She gave me a weak smile and then turned her back on me. Every time I saw her after that, she ignored me, either intentionally doing so or not remembering having met me. I decided that she was a bitch.
2. I was at a coffee shop and had just received my drink from the barista. I said thanks and turned to leave when I noticed a girl staring at me in disgust. I felt slightly taken aback. When I was outside, I remembered something and went back in to ask the barista a question. The same girl stared at me, still looking very disgusted. When I was in my car outside, the girl walked by me on the sidewalk. She didn't see me but this time it was me who stared at her. What a bitch, I thought, what is her problem?
But then I caught my reflection in the rear view mirror. And I noticed that I had chocolate all over my lips and chin from the chocolate croissant I was eating. So that's probably why the girl had been so disgusted. And that's when I admitted to myself that if I saw somebody out in public with that much chocolate in their face, I would probably think that they're an asshole. I am not proud of the fact that this is the judgment I would probably make about them, but it's something I have to admit. When I recognized this, I felt compassion towards the disgusted girl and was able to forgive her for her stares.
And suddenly I started thinking about that bitch Zeena. I remembered what I had said to her and realized that she probably gets Xena comments all the time. I decided that she was probably pretty bored by those comments. I know how bored I am by people starting to talk about Germany when they first find out I am from there. I know that I have been bitchy to people just for asking me "Where in Germany?" And this train of thought brought me to the conclusion that Zeena is probably not a bitch after all, and I was able to forgive her too.
I am still not proud of my own judgments and my own bitchiness, but recognizing them has at least allowed me to forgive the people who bring judgments and bitchiness against me. Assuming that the people I encounter are mirrors of myself, perhaps when I can stop judging others, others can stop judging me, and there will be no more bitches in my world. Until then I will keep reminding myself that we all get annoyed and bitchy sometimes, and that in our mind, there is always a very good reason for it.
*Name changed to protect the girl I am talking about.
Wouldn't it be nice if a break-up could not occur unless both people consented to it? If there was a series of conversations in which the person initiating the break-up convinced the other person that it was the right thing for both of them, given the feelings, thoughts and desires that were present? If the relationship was not actually over until the point of consent was reached and the other person was ready to let it go? I'm sure some relationships already end this way. And maybe this wouldn't work for everybody, but I feel like it would work for me, in either role.
It was about 4am. He was about to leave my place. Earlier in the night we had been out dancing and taking pictures of each other. We had also pulled each other's hair and shoved each other and purposely spilled water on each other. He had just taken a shower in my bathroom with the lights off and the door open. Now he was sitting on a chair in my kitchen. I was lying on my back on the kitchen floor. My feet were on his knees. A little earlier my toes had briefly been in his mouth. "How did it taste?" I had asked. "I couldn't taste anything; only my teeth touched them," he had replied. I had liked his straight-forward honesty. When he left, he also left some Skittles that I ate for breakfast the next morning. Sometimes I don't mind having candy for breakfast.
I find many love songs to be tasteless expressions of the inability for humans to handle emotional response and consequently display depressing aspects of control, worry, suspicion. It's hard for me to find lyrical music that doesn't turn my stomach. On the radio at work:
"every step you take, every move you make: I'LL BE WATCHING YOU" "oh can't you seeeeeee? - YOU BELONG TO ME..."
come on! this is what war is all about.
Today I listened to a wonderful song (thanks to my friend Starrie who burnt Winds of War for me). It had the following lyrics:
You live in my dreams, where you sit upon a shelf. You live in my dreams where I have you all to myself. You live in my dreams, you're not dead, but you're gone forever. You live in my dreams, the only place together can be forever.
These words reminded me that some people would rather see their lover dead than with another person. And it also made me think about how most people would rather take away their lover's freedom to see other people than give their lover the freedom to see other people.
Monogamy doesn't make sense to me anymore. I vow to love my lover so much--and to love myself so much--that I can give them the freedom to leave me when they wish, that I can give them the freedom to sleep with other people if they wish, that I do not feel the need to constrain or control them in any way. I am not quite there yet* because monogamous ideas have been deeply programmed into my consciousness, but that is where I aim to be.
*While I am giving and receiving that freedom currently, it doesn't always feel good. Yet.
My mom is coming to visit next week! She has never been to San Francisco even though I have lived here for nearly six years. My dad is not coming with her because he can't stand to be on a plane for more than four hours. He has never been to San Francisco either.
My mom arrives on Thursday next week. One week later we are going to drive down to Los Angeles. We are taking the long way down so that my mom can see pretty things along the way. We are going to stay at a hotel in Los Angeles for one night, and then I am going to drive back up to San Francisco by myself, and my mom is getting on an organized tour bus with a bunch of other Germans for a few days to go see the Grand Canyon, some National Parks in Utah, and Las Vegas.
Just before getting off the train in Vancouver on Friday, Feb. 29, I had breakfast with somebody I had met earlier: a married and childless artist from Texas. The conversation was very good for me as it totally validated me in my mortgage-free, childless and free-spirited existence.
In Vancouver we hit another low point. Kean was sick and tired, and when he does that, I internalize it and think that he is sick and tired of me. And maybe he was, and maybe I was a little tired of him too. It would have been nice to be able to take a break from each other for a day or so but that wasn't on the schedule. We had about two hours to walk around in a gray Vancouver before our border-crossing bus left for Seattle at noon. It was a very long-faced two hours.
On the bus Kean slept most of the time, and I talked to my mom on the phone. It was the first time I had non-roaming cell coverage in days. We got to Seattle on time, around 4:30pm. Now what was originally supposed to happen in Seattle was that we were going to get on a train all the way back to Emeryville, CA. But we had found out a few days ago that there had been a mudslide somewhere and that there was no train connection south of Portland. Amtrak was going to put us on a bus instead. But we had said "nuh-huh" to the bus and wanted to rent a car and drive from Portland instead. So that evening we hopped on a train from Seattle to Portland.
We arrived in Portland at 9pm and took a cab to my friends Trish and Kyle's place. They had found out too late that we were coming through Portland and had made plans for the night: They were spending the night at a hotel because Trish hadn't had a day off in three weeks. The key was under the doormat for us. I was sad not to be able to hang out with them but it was also nice to have a whole house to ourselves. It was the comfiest bed we had slept in since New Mexico.
Trish and Kyle came home in the morning, and we had coffee together. Then they both went to work, and I went to pick up our rental car. On our way out of Portland, we stopped at Simply Nourishing, Trish's brand new health boutique and weight management center. Trish and I had met through a counseling training a few years ago, and I am so proud of her for launching this business. Every time I see a storefront for rent I am tempted to call the number. The problem is that I don't know yet what exactly I would use it for! But Trish figured that part out, and it inspires me.
So now we were in a car instead of a train and drove down the coast of Oregon. That night we stopped in Coos Bay, OR and stayed at the same Motel 6 I had stayed at the first time I drove from San Francisco to Seattle in 2003.
The next day, Sunday, we finally arrived in San Francisco around 8pm.
And so around 9am on Tuesday, Feb. 26 we got on the VIA Rail Canadian train that we were going to be on for three whole days and nights, all the way from Toronto to Vancouver. We got to know that train REALLY WELL. We also recorded many videos on this part of the trip, which I can't wait to share once we get them onto my computer.
Our room on that train was tiny, even tinier than any of the other sleeper rooms we had been in. It was so tiny, it made me want to cry, especially since it was so much more expensive than any of the other sleeper rooms we had been in. But enough about that!
Most of the other people on the train were very, very old. Like, over 70. But there were also a few couples in their 50's. The first afternoon on the train there was a Bingo announcement. That made me want to cry too. But Kean - bless his heart - said "Okay, let's go play Bingo." I love him for that. Unfortunately we couldn't find where the Bingo was taking place, but it's the thought that counts.
When night fell, I decided to sneak into another empty bed on the train because ours was clearly too small for two people. Once I was inside and laid down my head, I shook with excitement and giggles. This is how a successful bank robber must feel. I slept there all night and slunk back to our own room just after sunrise. I still felt giddy from my sneaky mission. But that was about to change because when I made my way to the dining car for breakfast (Kean skipped it), I was confronted by one of the staff. I don't know how he knew what I had done, but he did. He told me that I better not do that again tonight, or I could get charged for an extra room. He said "I'm just giving you a lecture now instead of charging you." After being seated for breakfast, I started crying. Oh, the terrible injustice! All these empty beds on the train and none of them for ME! Why can't the train employees SHARE with us what they have!
Somehow we managed to both pile into the tiny bed that night and get some sleep. The next day was my favorite of the Canadia variety. In the morning we stopped in Edmonton. We took the opportunity to go outside, stomp around in the snow and slide on the ice. It was refreshing. Around lunch time we drank our very special tea and visited Lucy in the sky. Shortly after that the train stopped again, in Jasper right in the middle of the Canadian Rockies, and we wondered if we could go outside again. Sure could! We were told that we could "do the town" and were encouraged to "act like tourists." So we stepped out but oh, we forgot our jackets. And it turns out that our train was getting a new car added, so it was unavailable to us for over an hour. But at least the station was warm and offered tea and even some "social biscuits." We never did offer them to anyone to facilitate socializing even though we meant to.
Eventually we were able to get back on the train and were promptly served champagne. First the tea, now the champagne! Life was grand. I didn't want it to stop, any of it. My favorite thing Kean and I did that night was the "Excuse me!" game in the narrow hallway, where one of us stood with their back against the hallway and the other came face to face with the first, did a pelvic bump into the first and said "Excuse me!", then twirled around to have their back against the wall only to have the first person do the same bump into them. We did this down one entire hallway, for a total of about twelve "Excuse me!"'s, all the way up until we ran into one of the staff, at which point we said "Excuse us!" and collapsed into laughter. Also, later Kean filmed me crawling down the same hallway, and that was fun too, and when I was already on my knees and about to start crawling, the same staff saw me and asked "Are you in prayer?" and then started giggling. He was such a good sport. (And I love that he told me the next morning that he lived in San Francisco in the 60's and that LSD was very good for him then.)
When I woke up the next morning, all the snow was gone and there were trippy moss-covered trees everywhere. We were approaching Vancouver, but that's a story for another day.
Early in the morning on Monday, Feb. 25 we got on a train in New York City bound for Toronto. We were on it all day. At the border the loud couple with all the luggage across the aisle from us were pulled off the train and never came back. That was scary. Authorities make me ill. I don't understand why we try so hard to control other people. As long as they are not directly infringing on somebody else's freedom and/or rights, I think we should abstain from controlling other people.
We arrived in Toronto very tired at 9pm. That's when we found out that the train we were going to board the next morning was going to cost us twice as much as we thought. It put me in a very bad mood. I campaigned for us to cancel the Canada trip and get on another train back through the United States instead. U.S. sleeper trains were clearly much cheaper than Canadian trains. Kean was open.
But first we met Janet. Janet was a volunteer at the Traveler's Aid booth at the Toronto train station. She hooked us up with a Bed & Breakfast for the night AND then walked us to the subway station to show us which subway to get on to get to the Bed & Breakfast. A more helpful person I have rarely seen.
When we got to the Bed & Breakfast, we hit the first real low-point of the trip. Here we were in a huge room with a huge bed in a huge city, but we were dead tired and had to be back at the train station early the next morning to get on an overpriced train we didn't really want to be on. At least that's how I felt. All I really wanted to do was whine and sleep, but Kean wanted to explore Toronto and so did I, really. I reluctantly put on my warm clothes and dragged my long face outside. At least Kean was in a good mood though.
In the morning we almost canceled the Canada trip. But when I asked Kean "What do you really want to do?", he said that it was probably easier to stick with our original plans. He also said he was sure that we would find ways to make it worth it. I took that as a compliment. I also suddenly felt calm about the unexpectedly high price of this train. We hurried back to the Toronto train station.
The financial gods are making me their bitch this month
It's that time again: time to worry about money. Last month I had my taxes done and not surprisingly, I owed a big chunk. Before I left for my trip I sent off about $4,000 in federal and state taxes. I felt really smart about taking care of this right away and still do. It hurt to let that money go but it had to be done. Then, the Canada portion of our trip was twice as much as we had been quoted when we made the reservation. Apparently they had quoted as the PER PERSON price when we thought it was the TOTAL price. Ouch. Then I got a speeding ticket on the way from Portland to San Francisco. My fault but still: Ouch. Then I got sick and had to miss a day of cab driving on Monday. No money for me that day. And because I had to stay in bed that day and didn't use my car, I got a street cleaning ticket. THEN, two more 1099's arrived in the mail several weeks after I had already done my taxes. When I called my accountant about this, he told me that it would add about another $1500 to the taxes I owed. Gah! Add to this that the taxi business has been s u p e r s l o w this year so far and I have been averaging only about half of what I made during the fall, and that, despite best intentions, I have not been attracting any other work. At least I am wide awake now, yes, wide awake and ready for focus and action. I do have a counseling session scheduled for tomorrow but that's only $55 when what I need is 100 times that amount.
When I was thinking about this all while walking in my neighborhood today, I came across the pictured sign, which says
There is only one success - to spend your life in your own way.
Of course! I remember now why I go through this from time to time. Worrying about money two or three times a year is a small price to pay for spending my life in my own way. I am getting better at it. These dry spells used to cause sleepless, sweaty nights for me, but they don't even do that anymore.
He said to me "You know I idolize you for having been in a mental hospital."
It was almost as precious as when, years ago, I found out that my boyfriend at the time had been hospitalized for an eating disorder at the same age as me.
Off we went on another overnight train to Washington, DC. But before I get into that, I wanted to mention that one of my favorite parts of the train ride to Los Angeles was the time Kean read to me with a lisp. He read a whole chapter from his book out loud with a lisp, and it was the coolest thing ever.
I was really excited about arriving in Washington, DC because I was going to see Starrie there. I hadn't seen her in five years. We became really good friends when I lived in Virginia between 2000 and 2002 but had only seen each other once since I moved to San Francisco.
Starrie and her boyfriend Santino picked us up at the train station. We were going to drive somewhere but since our next train was leaving two hours later, we decided to keep it safe and walk instead. The National Mall and Capitol were right there outside the station. It was a beautiful sunny day and not cold at all. Again, I felt lucky weatherwise. The National Museum of the American Indian was nearby, so we walked there too. It was too bad we didn't have more time together, but I still think that two hours is infinitely better than nothing.
Later that day we arrived in Trenton, NJ. It was the closest station to Phillipsburg, NJ, where Kean's half-sister Laurel lives. She drove an hour and a half to meet us there. Little did any of us know that there is absolutely nothing to do in Trenton. We couldn't find a single coffee shop or cafe that was open. And these guys we asked at a gas station confirmed for us that nothing like that is open on Sundays after 6pm. So we ate at a pizza place and then had Dunkin Donuts coffee in Laurel's car outside a gas station.
Laurel dropped us off at the Trenton train station around 9:45pm. We had reservations for a train to New York City at 12:50am. Because the Trenton train station wasn't a very fun place to hang out, I decided to check the schedule to see if there was an earlier Amtrak to NYC. And wouldn't you know it, one was leaving in a few minutes. We lugged our luggage to the train track and asked the conductor if we could use our tickets for this earlier train. And sure enough, he waved us in. He even let us sit in first class because coach was all full. Score! It was only a one hour ride but still.
So we arrived in New York City around 11pm on Sunday, Feb. 24. Our train to Toronto was leaving at 7am. This was the one night I was most worried about. We didn't want to get a hotel in New York because it's so expensive, but we were going to be there all night. We were thinking that maybe we could make some quick friends, or that we'd hang out at a bar all night. We left the station aimlessly and staggered towards the Empire State Building because hey, it was right there. That's when I remembered that my dear friend Kati had recently moved to Brooklyn from San Francisco. I gave her a spontaneous call, and she spontaneously picked up. She said that she had just thought about me earlier in the day. She said that she had to work at noon the next day but that we were welcome to come over and hang out. Using the Internet, she told us which subway to take from exactly where we were to her house. Luckily, it was a direct line. We ditched the Empire State Building and hopped on the subway to Brooklyn. I was so happy that I had put on the Katipants that day! She had made them for me last year.
Kati was super happy to see me and the Katipants and meet Kean. Her roommate was asleep, so we had to whisper the entire time. We chatted, drank water and lounged on her comfy warm bed. After a while the three of us went to sleep, me in the middle of a K sandwich, all holding each other. It was a very short nap because we wanted to get up at 5 so that we would have enough time to take the subway back to the train station and make our train at 7. We did make it, and I didn't even feel like death despite only three hours of sleep. I think the happiness about this serendipitous encounter helped.
On the one full day we had in New Mexico, we borrowed Kean's aunt's girlfriend's cute little car and drove to Taos, a Native American pueblo. It was muddy and depressing, but I did find some cute feather-shaped silver earrings and a big wand of sage there. After that we checked out the earthships that Starrie had told me about. They are a settlement of self-sustainable, off-the-grid, semi-underground dwellings for humans.
That night we did nails. Robin, Kean's aunt, had an amazing assortment of nail polish. Kean did his left hand, and then I did his right hand because he is right-handed; I did mine, Robin's and Alea's. It was a lot of fun and a great way to form a safe physical bond with someone.
After having a delicious snack at Robin's new restaurant the next day (Friday, 2/22), we got on another train at 2pm and arrived in Chicago almost 24 hours later. We had a couple of hours to run around in Chicago before catching our next train to Washington, D.C. It was cold, but not *that* cold; I felt lucky given what I had heard about Chicago weather. I think it was around freezing point.
I really wanted to find a bookstore so I could buy Inspiration by Wayne Dyer, a book I had recently decided I needed. We found a Borders in downtown Chicago. They had many Dyer books but not the one I was looking for. The computer and store employees weren't very helpful so I decided to let it go. When we were outside, Kean expressed disappointment about my having given up so easily. His words inspired me to go back inside and try to get an employee's attention one more time. The shaggy-haired employee whose attention I commanded wasn't helpful either. But while he was talking, I looked around to the right, and then I heard myself say "Omg, there it is!" Several copies of the book were sitting on the display area on the side of the self-help section. So I bought it and was very thankful for Kean's nudge.
for me). It had the following lyrics:
