My first childhood crush had a tail. She was all shimmery fins and red hair and oh that voice... my heart ached when she sang of longing, and I genuinely hated the sea witch for what she did to poor Ariel. I had no idea why I wanted to watch her, but I wanted to do it all the time. I didn’t understand yet, and wouldn’t for years, what the feelings I was having actually meant. My parents grew sick of my obsession and begged me to move on. Move on, I did. Never away, though. I simply aquired new crushes to add to my stable. Ariel would always be there in the background, her gorgeous angular abs hugged by fairytale frocks and fishes. ( Collapse )
I'm not sure if anyone is reading this stuff, but I do still have a few LJ friends out there. I know my stuff is a little...graphic, and I'm sorry I was a jerk and wasn't putting the wall of dirty text behind cuts, so I did that. Past and future smut will include an LJ cut, and just keep in mind that anything tagged "smut" will obviously be NSFW.
Went to the mall today. It seemed like a thing to do. Making the days pass by keeping busy is about my only viable option right now. I've been working a lot, too, but whenever I'm not at work I just sleep in two hour increments and feel creaky. I'm having a little bit of a lupus flare and my spine hurts.
I'm all full of complaining, I know. It seems to be my best thing lately.
But today I bought some new mascara and some benetint and a new (clearance!) dress and some flats to replace the two pairs that I've worn to pieces. It's my self-gifting splurge of the summer. I'm always so hesitant to buy things for myself. I'd much rather get things for other people.
I had the weirdest dreams last night. The past couple of weeks have been full of weird dreams but last night's were super weird. Carrying around a dead baby because the police wouldn't take it, because who wants a dead baby? At a petting zoo, no less. And then some people tried to repossess my cat because some other people put their cat up for collateral against the car they bought, which we bought from them second hand...just, there are no words. I woke up just puzzled from the dead baby dream, but really worried from the cat one. I just have to tell myself over and over that no one wants to repossess Jim. He's useless to anyone but me.
I got to video chat with my husband tonight. He took the opportunity to tell me that his boss wants him to travel long term. He should be back the second week of July, and then leave August first for three weeks, then September first for the month of September. So that puts him at home about a month total for the four months spanning June-September.
I don't know how I'm going to do this. I found this person, who I fit with in every way possible. This person who is kind and wonderful and who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. And then we got married, and he's still so amazing. The butterflies of the first kiss are still there, every single time. I want to be a stepford for him, to make every detail of his smooth and flawless and full of beauty and light. He loves me for who I am, and who I am not. He is understanding to a fault. I got everything I ever wanted practically over night. It's like some sort of awful karmic balance that now, it should be complicated just as fast. why can't anything just work out and be good for once? Why must everything in life be a struggle?
I just don't know how to be a good wife to a husband who's a thousand miles away most of the time.
I'm so lonely and I never sleep and I spend most of my time crying.
It's supposed to all work out for the best. This is all working to him working permanently at the New Orleans office once it's established in September. It's really hard to be forward thinking though, when you're this alone. It all seems so counter-intuitive. Getting married just to be alone all the time. I crave the feeling of his skin on mine constantly. I simply don't know how to deal with the quiet.
I got to drinking last night, and had to force myself to come home. The dog needed walking, after all. I'm not sick or anything, I didn't make myself that drunk. But I don't like it. I don't like how it made it much easier to cry. I don't like how it makes the morning stretch out in front of me like some sort of endless limbo. I don't like how it made it harder to do yoga. I don't think I'll be doing it much any more.
I love my life. My husband and our little family of dog and cat are so wonderful. This crushing loneliness is something I'm going to have to overcome. I just don't know how. Being out with others just makes me feel worse, since I rarely do things socially that don't involve him, and that just reminds me that he's not there.
I don't think there's any way to help this, and I don't know if I'd want to help it if there was a way.
I just want my dream of the first night back. So that I can believe that he's not gone, even if it's only for a moment.
Before he left, one evening, Mike pulled out of his pocket a black stone. It's about the size of a small oyster, and oval-shaped. It's perfectly smooth, and seems almost warm to the touch. I picked it up and looked at it, and realized that it has grain. It's actually a piece of petrified wood.
He couldn't recall where exactly he'd gotten it. Just picked it up and put it in his pocket because he liked it. He left it on the table.
My husband left today. For a business trip. For at least a month. He did so once before. I cried every single day that time. I've cried, really cried, deep wracking sobs that made my diaphragm ache and my eyes swell up, at least four times today. I'm not so good at alone.
More than the fact that the quiet gets to me, is the fact that I love him...and when I love someone I want to surround myself in them. He's not there when I'm trying to sleep, and that makes all the difference in the world. A month without sex, I can handle. A month without sleeping more than two hours at a time will be far more difficult. I wake up with horrid nightmares, super real, so the fear and nausea won't let go, even though when I force myself to be truly awake and try and articulate myself to my real surroundings.
This afternoon, after I got back from taking him to the airport, and from running the errands he asked me to run when I got home, I sat on the couch and cried myself to sleep. I slept for nearly two hours, and had a dream that this whole thing was over, and we were laying in bed and he was holding me and stroking my face and he was so overwhelmingly *there* that I was able to just drift off. I felt safe. I woke up and realized it was all a dream, and cried some more. The dream didn't make me sad though. Fear that I wouldn't be able to have it again, since it's something I want so much, was what made me cry that time.
I've decided that while he's away, I'll exercise. Not for health, or well-being, as it would seem, but maybe to exhaust myself. The month will go so much more quickly if I can sleep through it. And maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to find that dream again.
Years ago, I think it must have been late 2004, I posted an entry in feminist_rage. It was the story of how I was raped, by an acquaintance, and how nothing would ever come of it, because the physical evidence was gone long before the memory-clouding drugs were. This same person did this to several women I knew, and none of them were willing to go forward with it. So it went unrecognized, and everyone went on with their lives. This was in October of 2003. I ended up moving 1500 miles away, in part to go back to a city I loved and called home, and in part to ensure that I wouldn't ever run into him on the sidewalk. I just couldn't face it.
In August of 2008 that is exactly what happened. I was at work, on Bourbon Street. I had walked up to the front door of the strip club where I worked, and who was walking past but this guy. He recognized me, even though I turned and ran back inside, and he went to one of the door men (coincidentally one who was a friend of mine) and told him to deliver a message to me...that I was expected at his bar for a drink after work.
This was nothing but a taunt. He knew I remembered and he wanted to get a reaction out of me. A reaction delivered by my unknowing friend. A drink at his bar after work was how the whole thing started. I, of course, would not take the bait, and instead got an escort home several strong by good friends.
I lived in fear of seeing him. New Orleans is a very very small town. But as soon as he was there, he was gone. I didn't run into him again, even in the microcosmic French Quarter. Until last winter. I went to the bank to deposit my paycheck, and he was there in line. Two or three people ahead of me. Winter, early 2010. It's been more than seven years since I was raped, and I still stood in line and shook. I desperately hoped he wouldn't notice me. But who doesn't notice a girl with a hundred tattoos and crayon red hair standing in line at the bank? He finished his business, declaring loudly that he worked at the Alibi (a strip club industry watering hole and total dive a few blocks away), mostly for my benefit I'm sure. Then he went and stood in front of the door, silently staring at me until my shaking was so bad I could barely communicate with the teller. He walked out just before I finished my banking. I told my boyfriend about it, and his answer was "you won't go to the bank alone anymore." I appreciate his genuine desire to abate risk, but that didn't help, when two months later, I drove past the Alibi and him, standing outside on the sidewalk, smoking a cigarette, and obviously on duty. He didn't notice me that time. I thanked whatever deities happened to be listening.
Months have gone by. I don't know if he's still in town. But I live in a different part of town now, and I drive several miles out of my way to go to the bank. When do I get my life back?
